Not a good strategy (Douglas Macgregor – MUST SEE!)

January 09, 2023

Meeting with mothers of servicemen participating in the SVO (transcript)

November 26, 2022

Note: this is a machine translated (Yandex) translation of the full Russian text posted here:

http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69935

It was sent to me from a reader.

Vladimir Putin met with mothers of servicemen participating in a special military operation in Novo-Ogaryovo.

November 25, 2022 17:30

Moscow region, Novo-Ogarevo

Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon again.

You know that the day after tomorrow we celebrate Mother’s Day in Russia. This is not some kind of pretentious noisy holiday, but still a day that is filled with a special, very kind content and emphasizes the attitude inherent in all the peoples of our country towards mom – respect, reverence, adoration.

In this regard, of course, I would like to recall this. But I understand perfectly well that for you, as well as for so many other women in Russia whose sons are in a war zone, of course, the attitude to this event is more than festive, but most likely connected with a sense of anxiety and concern, in thoughts about what is with your boys. Because for a mother, no matter what age her son is, [he is] always a boy, always a child. And for those, including those of you who are present here and who lost their son, of course, this is also connected with thoughts about this tragedy.

In this regard, I want to say that… You know, the language does not turn to say some formal standard things related to the expression of condolences. But I want you to know that I personally, the entire leadership of the country – we share this pain. We understand that nothing can replace the loss of a son, a child. Especially for mom, to whom we all owe the birth, who bore, nursed.

I want you to know that we share this pain with you and, of course, we will do everything so that we do not feel forgotten, we will do everything that depends on us to feel the shoulder next to us.

It is clear that life is more complicated and diverse than what is shown on TV screens or even on the Internet – you can’t trust anything there at all, there are a lot of all sorts of fakes, deception, lies. There are a lot of information attacks, because in the modern world it has always been so, but taking into account modern technologies it has become especially relevant and effective, information is also a weapon of struggle, and information attacks are one of the types, quite effective types of struggle.

This is why we have gathered with you, that’s why I proposed this meeting, because I wanted to listen to you firsthand, as they say, to hear your assessments – you have the same information coming from there. A lot of information flows to me from different sources, but it’s a completely different matter – it’s your ratings, your opinion, ideas, suggestions. I will try to make sure that everything that we are going to talk about today is taken into account and used in real life to the maximum.

This is what I would like to say at the beginning.

And concluding my brief introductory speech, I would like to say what I am constantly talking about, namely that, first of all, everything comes from the family. The fact that your guys – most of them – have chosen such a fate as serving the Fatherland, protecting the Fatherland, protecting the Motherland, Russia, protecting our people, in this case in Novorossiya, in the Donbas, is also the result of your work, without any doubt. This is not the result of some kind of instructions and moralizing – it is the result of a personal example. It’s always like that.

Because no matter what they say at school, which is very important, of course, but still the basis of any person’s self-consciousness, the basis of his value orientations is laid in the family by the personal example of parents. This is the most basic, most important and most fundamental method of education – a personal example.

Judging by the fact that your guys behave like this, heroically, that’s what I wanted to say, this is, of course, your huge contribution – yours and your men, your husbands, of course, this always happens in the family on both sides. But only they, the guys themselves, know that they are truly heroes.

Why? Because no one except them and their closest commanders, who are standing next to them, do not know what hard work it is and how much it involves a real danger to life and health. Only they themselves feel and understand it.

I talk to them sometimes – I talked to some of them directly on the phone, with the guys. In any case, I talked to those who even surprised me with their mood, their attitude to the case. They didn’t expect these calls from me, also through moms, by the way, these calls were. This gives me every reason to say that they are heroes. It’s true.

That’s all I wanted to say at the beginning. Let’s talk freely. As I said, I will definitely try to take into account everything that you will say today.

You are welcome.

S.Nabieva: I am Nabieva Suna Neifelovna from Dagestan.

My son, Enver, graduated from the Kazan Higher Military Tank School, serves in Buryatia. On his own from the first days, he was wounded twice, was in the hospital. After recovering, he returned to his unit.

We call him sometimes. And when he found out that I was going to meet you, he asked me to send greetings from all his guys and say that they would do everything that was required of them. He says: “My grandfather and two great-grandfathers served in the Great Patriotic War, I also must not let them down.” And his fighters on the front line also often remember their grandfathers. He has them from all over the country, republics. You said something recently, once you said: “I am a Lakh, I am a Dagestani, I am a Chechen, an Ingush, a Russian, a Tatar,” and everyone in Dagestan has heard and seen this speech of yours, and this is very correct.

Our family hails from the highland village of Jaba, Akhtyn district. We have a friendly big family, multinational. My mother–in-law is a heroine mother, she has 12 children. I would like to thank you very much for the fact that this high title of “Mother Heroine” – you have introduced it in our time – is very important for the mothers of Dagestan, Russia.

Vladimir Putin: Suna Neifelovna, first of all, thank you very much for the words conveyed from your son. From the very beginning, I asked the guys to have the most reliable and objective information about how the country treats their military work, the fulfillment of their duty.

I hope that our meeting today will also reach them, they will see it, modern means allow us to do this. Although, of course, radium communication poses a certain danger, so there are certain restrictions, but in the end they will certainly see it. Therefore, I want them, when they look, to see that the mother fulfilled her son’s request and this greeting was gratefully accepted.

For my part, I wish all the best to your son and his colleagues.

S.Nabieva: Thank you very much.

Vladimir Putin: What year did he graduate from college?

S. Nabieva: In 2010.

Vladimir Putin: I am sure that he fulfills his duty with dignity – in the way that is inherent in Russian wars in general, and even more so to soldiers from the Caucasus and Dagestan. There are people of a special temper there, we all know this well. I know this very well from 1999 and I will never forget these days and months that were associated with well-known events for Dagestan.

Dagestan is a multinational republic, and Russia as a whole is a unique civilization, where people of different nationalities, ethnicities, and religions have lived side by side for a thousand years. And the uniqueness lies in the fact that over these centuries of living together, people have not just found a common language with each other, but have learned to respect each other’s customs, religion, celebrate together with each other and, if some hard times come, overcome these hard times together.

Therefore, when I said the words that you have just remembered, of course, you can’t write it – I just spoke from the heart. And I know that it is, I know that the guys there do not divide themselves into any separate castes and nationalities: everyone is equal, everyone helps each other and understands that their lives depend on this mutual help and support – that’s what is very important. And they are very worthy of this service, as I have already said.

So thank you very much, thank you for your son. And to him, in turn, convey the best wishes, to him and his colleagues, to all his subordinates.

S.Nabieva: Thank you.

N.Pshenichkina: Vladimir Vladimirovich, I am from the Luhansk People’s Republic, from the small town of Kirovsk.

The city is on the front line. We are fighting and recovering thanks to the Russian Federation. Our bosses are the Irkutsk Region, and 55 objects are being restored now. Recently, the governor was with us, in my library, at school, and I was here.

But on September 30, as everyone already knows, my girls here, we had a great, joyful, long-awaited event: we have become a subject of the Russian Federation, which is what the militia of the first wave dreamed of.

Russian Russian word, when my son joined the militia in 2014, he said: “Mom, I’m going to fight for Russia, I’m going to fight for the Russian world, I’m going to fight for the Russian word, for the Russian memory.” My dad went through the whole war from 1941 to 1945, came with a Victory. We have been waiting for this event for a very long time, we went the hard way, we lost people dear to us, but we did not lose hope that we would be in Russia, we would come home. And this joyful event has come true for us.

But my son, Konstantin Pshenichkin, died in one of the morning battles defending the city. The situation so developed that the enemy came close to their positions. He jumped out of the trench, called the fire on himself, and his last words were: “Let’s go, brothers, chop “dill”. He was posthumously awarded the medal “For Bravery”.

My heart bleeds, my soul freezes, gloomy memories cloud my mind, tears, tears, and suddenly my son asks me: “Mom, don’t be sad, I’ll see you – you just have to wait. You will go through this life for me, and in that life we will be together again.”

I raised my head, straightened my shoulders and began to actively help the families of the fallen militia. I sought benefits, was a member of the public chamber. I was the organizer of the first two referendums, and the second referendum was a member of the public commission. You know, no one has ever seen such activity: old ladies with sticks were walking with flags and songs. “We’ll drive up to you.” – “No, we want to. And tell Putin hello.” They believe that we are envoys of Vladimir Vladimirovich, so to speak. So I know all this firsthand.

Allow me, Vladimir Vladimirovich, our dear President, to highlight a few issues after all.

Vladimir Putin: Of course.

N.Pshenichkina: We are young subjects, we are just integrating into the legislative field of the Russian Federation, as well as medicine. But we have a problem with the examination of the wounded. They need to go through so much, collect certificates, that a healthy one will not collect. And to drive from Kirovsk to Alchevsk, from Alchevsk to Beloe, where the hospital is, from Beloe back again, then to Lugansk, and the Military medical commission works in Lugansk – only once a week. Is it possible to walk from 20 cities and districts in one day? Is it necessary to hire? And if it’s legless? How to go? You, please, somehow give an instruction so that it is in the “one window” mode or these commissions leave.

And then there’s another thing: commanders don’t always make log entries carefully. He left for the hospital, they don’t write about what wound. And then the guys have to prove the obvious, but they gave their health for the Motherland, they became disabled. I know this because I am being addressed.

And one more question, it is floating in the Donetsk People’s Republic right in the air, and in our republic. Will the benefits that Russian servicemen or the families of the victims currently have be extended to the families of the victims before September 30?

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

I would like to convey from all the residents of Donbass, from the women of Donbass, from the Union of Women of Donbass, from those mothers who took their sons to the front, words of gratitude to you, support, confidence – we believe in victory, it will be ours – to wish you the strongest health.

And if we are gathered here today, these are the best moms, moms with a capital letter. From the women of Donbass, a fighting greeting to you – from the patient women of Donbass. And, girls, you know what, be proud of your sons, you have brought up real heroes! Everyone who is there now, they are heroes!

I wish you the best of health, to wait for everyone alive and with victory.

Happy holidays, dear ones!

Vladimir Putin: Thank you.

Nina Petrovna, first of all, as for 2014. In hindsight, we are all smart, of course, but we proceeded from the fact that maybe Lugansk and Donetsk will be able to come to an agreement somehow within the framework of the Minsk agreements, which you probably know about, will still be able to somehow reunite with Ukraine. We sincerely went to this. But we didn’t fully feel the mood of the people, it was impossible to fully understand what was going on there. But now it has probably become obvious that this reunion should have happened earlier. Maybe there would not have been so many losses among civilians, there would not have been so many dead children under shelling, and so on.

It’s good that this happened at all. And this is happening thanks to your son, who is not with us today, and thanks to the sons of those women who are here, and thanks to our guys who are fighting there now, are on the front line, well, on the second, third line – it doesn’t matter, but they are in the zone of a special military operation, I mean the sight of all our fighters, including those who joined the ranks of the Armed Forces on mobilization. This is the first.

Second. Of course, this is a huge tragedy, this is a void that cannot be filled with anything, you have just said this so very convincingly and vividly when there is no loved one, especially a son.

But you know what comes to my mind, I already mentioned it once. We have about 30 thousand people killed in road accidents, about the same amount from alcohol. And it happens, unfortunately, this is how life develops, life is complex and diverse, more complicated than it is written somewhere in the papers, we are all under the Lord, under Allah, under Christ, I do not know, everyone who believes in higher powers, it does not matter what religion he adheres to, it is important that that we are all mortal, we are all under the Lord. And we will all leave this world someday, it’s inevitable.

The question is how we lived. After all, some people live or don’t live – it’s unclear, and how they leave – from vodka or something else – it’s unclear, and then they left. Lived or did not live – it also slipped unnoticed somehow: whether a person lived, or not. And your son lived, you know? His goal has been achieved. This means that he did not leave his life in vain. Do you understand? In this sense, of course, his life turned out to be significant, lived with the result, and with the one he aspired to. This is the first thing I would like to say.

Nina Petrovna touched upon a very important issue – the organization of the work of social services. Of course you’re right. If there are so many problems there that you just mentioned: with trips, with these endless documents. We have this “one-stop shop” system in the civil sphere in Russia.

N.Pshenichkina: Yes, we talked.

Vladimir Putin: And it works very efficiently.

This is probably more difficult to do here, because it is at the junction of several departments, including the military. The military always closes something, even where there is no need to close anything. Military people are sitting here – they probably know too. Where there are no secrets, they still tell something about some secrets.

But the fact that social services should work more efficiently, should work in such a way that they do not create any problems, is not burdensome for people, especially for the guys who have suffered, injured, this “one window” service, even if it is at the junction of civilian departments and the military, certainly needs to be organized. I will not just give some command and forget. We will bring this to an end.

N.Pshenichkina: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: It may not work out right away, because it’s not easy to do it at the junction of these departments, but we will definitely do it. This is the first.

Now – benefits. Now we have adopted a law according to which all Russian benefits are extended to residents of Lugansk, Donetsk and two other territories. It is possible to spread this, as they say, retroactively, starting in 2014. Where there are one or two lawyers, there are at least three or four opinions, but we will work on this and we will make some kind of system of appropriate benefits.

N.Pshenichkina: For those who have this status.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, we need to see.

I will not hide it, before entering here, I talked with the Minister of Defense, I talked with Tatyana Alekseevna Golikova, I understood where I was going and what questions could be raised. Therefore, in principle, I have already talked to them in general terms, now I have written it down, and these will be more specific instructions. We’ll work on it. Ok?

N.Pshenichkina: Thank you, thank you very much.

Vladimir Putin: You know, of course, thank you for paying attention to this topic, I mean that you take care of other guys who are in the special operation zone, you think about their families. This once again underlines [that] special, I think, that is inherent in people from Russia – a multinational, but still a single people who live by the same values. This is very inherent in us.

Thank you very much.

You are welcome.

I.Sumynina: Hello!

Sumynina Irina Viktorovna, Krasnodar city.

First of all, I want to express my gratitude in general for being here today. Although there is no merit of mine, it was our Kuban Cossack army that sent me here.

Vladimir Putin: Are you a Cossack?

I. Sumynina: Yes. We have a Cossack family, we have four sons. The husband and two of the sons are now on combat duty, so to speak. They went as volunteers, not mobilized. Again, they went from the army as Cossacks.

The husband and the eldest son are together, they serve in the LEOPARD, and the youngest child is in the special forces, in intelligence. They have very well–coordinated groups, they support each other very much, in general, the fighters are not exactly my men, but in detachments.

Vladimir Putin: I know the Leopards fight well.

I. Sumynina: They are a mountain for each other, they help each other, support each other both physically and mentally, they will never abandon the fighters – neither the wounded nor the dead. You even have to throw off your uniforms, the same tactical belts, bulletproof vests, just to lighten yourself and could take out comrades, comrades and weapons, of course.

That’s why there is a big problem of staffing, especially in special forces. The Ministry of Defense dressed, shod, but exists… I will speak for the youngest son. He is in intelligence, and he needs a separate uniform so that it is light, warm, seasonal, even stripes in color. They don’t have any masks… Here is the eldest son – a sniper, he also, for example, does not have a camouflage, what kind of uniform is, this is what it is. The uniform generally falls into disrepair very quickly, because in the trenches, there, you know, mud, wet, cold, you can’t make a fire. Of course, a lot of guys are sick. But what’s the point? The fact is that the form should be as close as possible, and so that it would be easier and faster to replace the old form with a new one, because it becomes unusable very quickly. Even the same tactical belts. Here is a machine–gunner husband, and literally a few months – everything, his pouches are already unusable, to carry zinc.

Another big question. In the war zone, when new territories are liberated, there are a lot of street children, a lot. The good news is that our guys have very good food, that is, there are no problems with food. And they constantly feed the locals, especially the kids. They are so happy about these cookies, sweets and so on.

I know that, of course, work is being carried out to find these children, to help them, their families, and this, of course, cannot be abandoned. It is necessary to strengthen, probably, the help to these children. Moreover, in the Krasnodar Territory now, probably, sanatoriums will be free – at least to take them out here, because it is very cold, very wet, there is no light, no water, no food. This is a big problem.

The guys are very united, positive, do not lose heart. Everyone understands that he is in his place – they are like that. They say we even like to laugh – it’s such a release.

Vladimir Putin: Irina Viktorovna, of course, the Cossacks are a special caste here.

I. Sumynina: Cossacks – yes, of course. I forgot to say – our chieftains are constantly collecting cars, at least once a month they try to take humanitarian aid. We, of course, take part in all this – we collect and send the same boxes with sweets, with gingerbread, so that they give it to children. Because our fighters don’t really need it anymore, and the kids – yes, it’s food for them.

Vladimir Putin: The Cossacks have switched from horses to cars, but they use it successfully.

I. Sumynina: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: But this, I repeat once again, of course, is a special caste. The fact that they occupy a special place in the history of Russia, have always been serving people, have always been at a combat post and have always been ahead is an absolutely obvious thing. This has always been the case in the history of Russia. They were ahead, because it all started with the fact that their main task was to protect the borders. Well, then, as the country developed, the frontiers went further, and their service to the Motherland continued in different capacities.

The fact that today they fulfill their duty to the Motherland, to the Fatherland, is, of course, on the one hand, it seems to be in tradition, and on the other hand, it emphasizes that nothing disappears anywhere.

I.Sumynina: This suggests that the Kuban Cossacks are actively participating in a special military operation.

I also wanted to say about the family. We must show by personal example, educate children. Not just to say something somewhere, but by personal example. My husband has been working with children at school for 13 years, he is a Cossack mentor. The children were brought up in the same way, their father instilled military affairs in them – these are both hiking and shooting constantly with Cossacks in our military unit.

I worry, I’m nervous, of course, you forget everything here.

O.Shigina: We didn’t grow up in “golden” diapers.

I.Sumynina: Yes, they did not grow.

My husband was in 2014 in the Crimea and Novorossiya, he has awards. In the spring and summer I was in the Donbass, also has awards. Looking at the father, of course, the sons could not stay at home. This is a personal example of my husband.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, that’s right. That’s what I started with, everything from the family.

I.Sumynina: Yes, I confirm it.

Vladimir Putin: Firstly, there are several Cossack units there, not only the LEOPARD.

I.Sumynina: Yes, there is a “Kuban” there.

Vladimir Putin: And the fact that the supreme ataman is in charge is also important. I am aware of this, and, of course, we will support it in every possible way.

You have two sons, it’s time for one to return, at least to come on vacation.

I.Sumynina: They offered him to go on vacation now, he says: “I won’t go, because my guys are all there.” And he is the commander of the group. He says, “I’m not leaving, I’m staying there.” God forbid, they may be released in January. And so – no.

Now the youngest is 17, I think with horror – he will turn 18, and this one will go there.

Vladimir Putin: Don’t, that’s enough.

I. Sumynina: And everyone says to him: “They left you here for your mother, here are the guards.”

Vladimir Putin: Yes, of course.

I. Sumynina: But you can’t stop him.

Vladimir Putin: Yes. But it seems to me that one of the sons should also return, they have already fought, God forbid, of course.

Look, the fact that you are a Cossack, it is obvious, because such subtleties are tactical: both body armor, and unloading, pouches, zincs. This is a special terminology. It’s all from them, from your men.

About the clothes. I was pleased to hear that the situation with the supply and nutrition has improved. Is this the latest information with clothes?

I. Sumynina: Yes. Just why do I know? When it happens to my son, when they leave everything, and he just writes to me: mom, I need this, this, this. We have, well, in Krasnodar there are good shops where you can buy all this.

Vladimir Putin: I see. The Ministry [of Defense] is trying to organize this work as efficiently as possible, taking into account the time of year. Believe me, I’m telling you quite sincerely, looking straight into your eyes: every time I meet with the leadership of the Ministry of Defense, and they happen every day, I talk about it almost every day. Every day. We’ll see what happens there in the coming days, but I marked it for myself.

I.Sumynina: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: The second important thing is that you mentioned street children. Now only the work of Russian social services is unfolding in these territories, they were not there before.

I. Sumynina: Yes, of course.

Vladimir Putin: There wasn’t much there at all, as far as I understand, but now this work is unfolding. But now that I’ve listened to you, I’ve thought about something – that it’s not enough to simply deploy the work of social services, there you need to take some special measures related to finding these children and supporting them. We will definitely do it.

I.Sumynina: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you for paying attention to this. As well as equipment.

I.Sumynina: And, of course, the Cossacks of the Kuban Cossack army tell you: “Love!”

Vladimir Putin: And thank them very much for everything, for their service, for their loyalty to the Motherland.

I.Sumynina: Thank you. I’ll pass it on.

Elena Nikulnikova: Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

Nikulnikova Elena Viktorovna. I came to you from the Tula land and brought you strong hugs from the Tula people, especially from women, mothers, and handshakes from men. And they asked me to tell you that the people are with you and the people are for you.

I am the mother of a guard corporal of the intelligence unit, who was on another business trip at the time of the start of the special operation and was very sorry that he was absent from his homeland at that moment. But from the first days he announced to me that as soon as he returned home, after a few days of rest, he would immediately go to the front. And there was not an ounce of doubt in his words, and that’s right. Because every man’s duty is to defend his homeland. Just like his father once did, who is no longer with us, but he put 25 years of service to the Motherland. He also participated in hot spots, was a combat veteran. Just like his great-grandfather, who during the Great Patriotic War, from 1940 to 1944, defended our Homeland, and in September 1944, personally leading a battalion, went on the offensive, was wounded in this battle and subsequently died of wounds and was buried on the territory of Ukraine. He was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War I degree, the Order of Alexander Nevsky. He was a little older than my son, he was 26 years old.

Our sons defend our Homeland in the epicenter, and we try to support them in the rear. Our governor Alexey Gennadievich Dyumin, you know, he accepted the mobilization not even as the head of the region, but as a father who personally controls all the processes of providing uniforms, all the processes of training mobilized soldiers, for which everyone is very grateful to him. So we, the common people, do not stand aside. We have in every city, almost in every village, collection points of support for mobilized soldiers. Personally, I observe how everyone wants to participate, to support our soldiers. And even from our small, small town, nine cargoes have already been sent in different directions.

And I agree with the previous mother, Irina Viktorovna, who said about the lost things that it is paperwork that does not allow you to quickly make up for lost things. In the same way, the procedure for writing off both destroyed equipment and the same things is outdated.

Plus I would like to add – now the situation is a little different, of course, about quadrocopters. They should be on the balance sheet not only in special purpose units, but also in all other units that go to the front line.

In conclusion of my speech, I would like to thank you once again from mothers who love our country, and from women – for taking care of women who raised sons, defenders of our Motherland.

Vladimir Putin: Everything from Mom is true.

As for drones, quadrocopters and so on. We are aware of this, we are working on it, and the industry is working on it.

Unlike those with whom we have to deal, and in this sense we have to fight not with them, but with those who supply and pay them everything – they actually use them as cannon fodder. This, without any exaggeration, does not count with losses there, does not count at all. And those who behave incorrectly, as they believe, are shot in front of the line – our guys watched with their own eyes – and the bodies are lying around, they don’t even collect the executed.

Recently, there was another case – five people were shot in front of the formation – those who refused to go or left the positions. There is a completely different moral atmosphere there. This once again confirms that we are dealing with a neo–Nazi regime – without any exaggeration. Not to quarrel with someone, but on the fact of their behavior. They don’t behave like that. But it doesn’t matter. And what is important is that we feel like people and feel that we are doing the right thing, protecting those of our people who now live in the territories that became part of the Russian Federation, which should have been done a long time ago, judging by what Nina Petrovna said. They’ve been waiting for this for a long time.

Regarding the order of property write–off and so on – I marked it for myself, we’ll see. But this should primarily be related to the order of the update. We’ll see about that. And I’ll tell Dyumin what you said. I’m just going to see him today, we have a working meeting.

Thank you very much.

E.Nikulnikova: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much.

You are welcome.

M.Kostyuk: I am Maria Kostyuk, the mother of an officer, Senior Lieutenant Andrey Kovtun, who was in the combat zone from the very beginning. As he said, he left to fight and protect us from fascist inhumans, but then, when he returned to his time, he continued, said: “While I’m there, they won’t come here.” “Because,” she says, “if you (I somehow, as a mother, tried to say that everything happens in life, I can make any decision you make, for which I got it very quickly, harshly) knew what they were doing to women and children there, you would even think I couldn’t. While I’m there, they won’t be here. And here you are, my wife, my son, so the boys and I are there.”

Initially, he was a company commander in the 40th engineer-sapper regiment. This is the same crossing over the Seversky Donets, which they have brought several times, the famous one. He returned home, on July 29 he turned 26 years old. He was delighted that he was celebrating his birthday at home for the first time in 10 years, on August 4 he again left for the combat zone as a company commander in the 74th Motorized Rifle Brigade, and on August 10, near the village of Disputable of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the reconnaissance group was ambushed, and, having received a signal for help, Andrey with his characteristic independence and with confidence he rushed to help the guys, covered the direction of fire with his BMP and himself.

He saved the sappers, Andrei himself died, but thanks to him the guys are alive. And you know, when, after his death, a video was played in the American media for a week that they had neutralized Senior Lieutenant Andrei Kovtun, I finally, probably, made his decision that he could not have done otherwise. And the belief in his work, which he did for life, for life, and – our case – at the cost of his own life, took root inside.

And today, as a mother, I tell all our girls, our mothers, that today we are the first to show an example of how to appreciate the feat of our sons, not to reset it and, first of all, to live. Life, no matter how painful, is bitter. Open your eyes every day and live. To live by ourselves, to help others live and to teach them to live and appreciate this life, for which our guys fought there and are fighting now.

Pain does not choose whether you are an entrepreneur, a teacher or an official, it hits a person. Here I am the mother of an officer, but I am the deputy chairman of the Government of the Jewish Autonomous Region. I am the same official about whom they write everywhere today that we hide our loved ones from our own, that we are trying to sabotage the mobilization. I do not know where they see them, where they see such officials, I know completely different examples.

The guys are doing their military duty there today, and we are here in the rear, really in the rear, we must all do civilian duty together today. Because my son defended his big homeland, but each of them has a small one in his soul. And the boys who are there today, they all have a small homeland: they have their own yard, their own entrance, they have the road along which they went to school. And when they come back from there, what will they see?

I think they should see a new country. They should see the country for which they are now fighting and fighting there. They should see it equipped, well-maintained, clean. And, probably, we all have to do this with you. Maybe we can multiply the funding of programs, maybe unite all together, local communities, but we have to change for them.

If I may, literally two examples. They wrote all around – again, social networks, the media – that Moscow was empty, big cities were empty as soon as mobilization was announced. We had queues. The small village of Teploozersk in the Jewish Autonomous Region – at the beginning of the working day, there is a queue at the military enlistment office. Half of the team came from the cement plant and they say: “Take us together with him (with the conscript), he is small, frail, he can’t cope alone, we will go with him.” Is this not an indicator? Isn’t it necessary to try for them?

Or, already when the combat coordination was taking place in the village of Bijan, a mobilized man, Mikhail, approaches the governor Rostislav Ernstovich [Goldstein] and says: “Talk to my wife.” Everyone tensed up: what can he ask, what can he talk about? He says: “She runs around, collects certificates that I am unfit for military service. She doesn’t listen to anyone, you talk. I’m not coming back, I’m not going, I’m going with the guys. I’ll come back from there with them later.” And for their sake, we need to do everything today.

You know, ITS united us all today, it really united us. Today there is such a surge of civic activity, volunteering – a great gratitude that it is supported today, and God grant that it will continue to be supported. Because you and I have replaced the iron curtain with iron doors, we have locked ourselves in our apartments and lost each other. And today it is such a real, big, powerful appeal, a powerful association.

And first of all, I would like to address you with such a request, if I may. Today it is necessary to organize memorable places, some squares of memory, places of memory, to name art objects in honor of our heroes, to break up parks and not listen to those who write everywhere today and say: when everything is over, then. Why? Are we shy of our heroes? Or do we doubt our victory? Who doubts? Here we are, mothers, there are millions more behind us, we can convince any inhabitant of our country and others of what kind of victory, what price is given, and that it will be ours, it is ours. Give us these people who doubt.

And you know, I would like to add here that … of course, I would probably hang stars on the doors of these heroes as a sign of respect from society, as in the Great Patriotic War. But the veterans who come from there, guys, here they need to fill the military enlistment offices today. Why? Because today they know the price of life, and they know that behind every combat unit there is a real human fate. So that there are no cases when a 25-year-old widow comes to the military enlistment office, lost, who does not know what to do and how to do, and they say to her: “Do you know how many people like you? Come back in a month.” And the girl gets lost. And then they stray, excuse the phrase, into the widow’s realms, there are three or four of them, 24-25 years old, and they are already lost. They hire some kind of military lawyers. For what? On the contrary, we must show them that their husband is a hero, that today we appreciate his feat and support this family.

Well, the boys are there – they help them: they fill the refrigerator, and help them to somehow hold on, and they are engaged in children. But then they leave for the tape, they continue to work, they continue to fulfill their duty. Who are these girls for?

They cannot get a pension, because for at least three months, I even say by my example, it is impossible to get a certificate. Our regional military enlistment office has already been connected, but we cannot simply get a certificate that the girl does not receive benefits there. But she has me. And those girls who are single, what do they live on now? How do they feel inside? Their husband gave his life for our country.

In general, I think that it is necessary to make sure that our veterans of the SVO – the guys who are now returning from there – are in schools every day. Because it is they who understand the meaning of life today, who can openly, truly tell who the hero is. They can form a real image of today’s hero, you know, maybe a hero of our time. They will succeed – not all of them, but these will succeed.

If I may, there is one more request. Today, in my understanding, it is a very terrible situation when chat rooms are spread on social networks, where the Ukrainian CIPsO [Center for Information and Psychological Operations] and our foreign agents – “ours”, what does “ours” have to do with it, Lord, I said something – mislead our moms. They convince them, playing on their anxiety, beat them to the most painful, vital point, that they should talk to their sons so that they surrender, leave their place of service, leave military operations. They convince them in such a way that they come there, promising to give up their son from captivity or promising to give up the body. They write to moms in chat rooms, communicating with them like moms. What are our moms doing? They write the current phone number of their son when he is there, and then they arrive there. When they correspond in these chats, they write where exactly the unit or company in which their son is stationed is stationed. And then there’s a flight. Her son and other sons, someone’s husbands, brothers, fathers are dying. It’s scary, I understand that you have to work with moms. We are ready to help in this situation. But here, it seems to me, it is impossible to do without such a very important department as the Ministry of Defense. Because here it is necessary to nip in the bud, here it is necessary to carry out a lot of explanatory work with relatives and here it is necessary to save moms, help them, support them in the fact that in fact everything is not so, everything is completely different.

You know, I have colleagues who are in all regions today, I think they all support me. We are all ready to work 24 by 7 on this story, because it is very important. I am speaking here today, of course, both as a mother and as a person who works in power, because help, care and support will certainly be there. And we are ready to provide it today.

I stopped, I can talk a lot. This is my sore subject.

Vladimir Putin: First of all, Maria Fedorovna, I would like to note. You said about the heroes of our time. Lermontov had another hero. He had an eternal spleen, he lacked something, he doubted. He was sorry, after all, that he had interfered in the lives of honest smugglers and so on and so forth.

You have another son, and here the mothers are sitting those guys, those guys of ours who are really heroes in the literal sense of the word. This is the first.

The second is about what happened. See, he’s a real hero, your guy. He consciously did what he passed away for, dedicated his life to.

I once said: “For my friends.” It’s, you know, in the Bible, in the Torah, and in the Koran – there are things of this kind everywhere, you know? Indeed, a person with only such an upbringing and with such an attitude to his neighbors and to the cause he serves could do as your Andrey did, judging by what you have told.

M.Kostyuk: The guys told me.

Vladimir Putin: The guys told me, especially. They won’t cheat, it’s not fakes from the Internet.

About what you said about families and about military enlistment offices. After all, all of us – and some big bosses, and lower officials, and ordinary citizens – are one people, no matter what position or position we hold. And there are always different people, and there are different officials: there are those like you and your family, and there are those who in some structures – and you have just spoken about them with indignation – and in military enlistment offices treat the families of our servicemen haughtily or bureaucratically, carelessly and with a chill. Therefore, our task, of course, is to get rid of such people and of such a manner of communicating with people.

In this regard, of course, what you are doing, what Nina Petrovna is doing, and many of those present here, is very important. It is very important to rip off this “crust of indifference” from officials of various levels, from some state structures. We need to do this.

Frankly speaking, after all, I asked you to gather today in order to make it clearer to me, too, where the problems are. Of course, I know a lot of what you say – almost everything. But it’s one thing when you know from paper reports, even from oral reports of colleagues, and another thing when directly from you, from life, directly, everything is alive, you know. It matters.

Therefore, what you are saying about it is very right and good, and even better is that you are doing it. Thank you for that. I know that there are various initiatives there, various public groups are being created. They are needed precisely in order for us to act more effectively. In the end, if we do as you suggest, this is the road to our more effective work and to achieving the result that you also said that the country would be different. We must act together in this direction.

And as for, frankly speaking, the actions of the enemy, and your guys are fighting directly with the enemy, he is right on the contrary, and in the information sphere is also an enemy. When you say that they are trying to convince someone of something, to throw in some false information, to encourage some actions. What actions do they encourage? They encourage destructive actions that nullify that, discredit that for which your son passed away.

That’s why it’s being done: to devalue what our guys are doing, and to devalue, in my opinion, our very noble impulse – to protect our people in Donbass, in Zaporozhye, in Kherson. That’s what they do: devalue all our efforts and what our guys are doing, devalue, compromise and ultimately achieve their goals. And we, as you correctly said, as everyone here says, must achieve our own, and we will achieve them, without any doubt.

As for being attentive to the guys, including the injured, who have injuries, so that they work in the same military enlistment offices, this team already exists. The Ministry of Defense is doing this and will continue to do it, but this is not enough. I think it is necessary to make a separate program for children who need additional support related to future employment. We need to make a separate program, and we will do it.

M.Kostyuk: Thank you very much.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you.

You are welcome.

I.Tas-ool: Hello.

Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon.

I.Tas-ool: Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

First of all, I would like to thank you for your sensitive attention and support of our guys.

My name is Irina Igorevna. I represent the Republic of Tyva. My eldest son serves in the 57th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Khabarovsk Territory. On March 7, he began taking part in a special military operation. On April 30, as I later found out, he was seriously injured. I found out about it myself on May 7. He initially told me that he had problems, that he just had a cold. Of course, I understand him, he didn’t want to upset me. But then, of course, a few days later I still contacted our deputy of the Republic of Tyva, asked for his help – to understand the whole essence of his illness.

Then my son received more than six months of treatment in hospitals: for five months he was in the Vishnevsky Hospital in Moscow and for more than a month he was in a hospital in Khabarovsk. He is currently staying at our home, in the Republic of Tyva. I received help in the form of rehabilitation in the sanatorium “Serebryanka”, which we have in the city of Kyzyl.

As the mother of a wounded soldier who needs long-term treatment, I am concerned about the development of a rehabilitation system and support for their families when they are already injured. I would like some kind of targeted program to be developed, where not only wounded soldiers and fighters, but also their families would receive help, because these mothers, wives, children are also facing this for the first time, and not everyone understands, knows where to turn, to whom to turn. And some families solve this problem for a long time, let’s say.

Also, in the Republic of Tyva, on your instructions, a medical diagnostic center was built in 2020, the main focus of which was to protect the population from coronavirus infection, and this center played a huge help and support during the outbreak of this pandemic. But now this [virus] has been minimized, and I would like this center to have the status of a military hospital, so that the guys, after they arrive at home, in this case in Tyva, know that there is a place where they will receive treatment, rehabilitation.

It’s also good, you just mentioned that you need help finding employment for these citizens. Because my son, when he was just signing a contract, he thought that he would be a military man, his whole life would be connected with this. And when on October 25 of this year the military commission recognized him unfit for service in military units, there is already a rethinking: where, how, further employment. Therefore, it is also necessary to attract these guys to work in military enlistment offices, also in the educational sphere, where they will explain how to be a patriot of their country. In the military enlistment offices, they will give advice because they know, because they have passed it all.

I would also like to thank the Government of the Republic of Tyva. They, too, in turn, provided assistance to the families of mobilized citizens, to which we, the common people, are very happy and grateful.

Thanks for attention.

Vladimir Putin: Good.

Irina Igorevna, first of all, we will see how to help you. And in general: Maria Fedorovna has already said here about military enlistment offices that it is possible to attract children, especially after injuries, to involve them in this work. We will do that. This is the first.

Second. You have raised the issue more broadly. In general, we need to think and create a system not just for rehabilitation. The Minister tells me that military hospitals are only 38 percent full, but the healthcare system itself is ready to work with our guys, the civilian healthcare system, including rehabilitation. We will definitely come back to this, so that rehabilitation takes place not only in the medical institutions of the Ministry of Defense, but taking into account the readiness and desire of the civilian health care system to work with our guys, especially those who have been injured. But we need to sort it out between the departments. We will do this and make greater use of the opportunities of domestic healthcare. This also applies to regional, republican, and federal centers.

And of course, we need a separate rehabilitation program in the broadest sense of the word, including additional training and employment. Additional training is definitely absolutely in demand. Be sure to think about it. I’ve marked it, and we’ll do it.

I. Tas-ool: Thank you.

Yu.Belekhova: Vladimir Vladimirovich, my name is Yulia Belekhova. I head the regional branch of the Popular Front in the Moscow region. A mother with many children. The eldest son left for mobilization in October.

We discussed the topic of supporting the families of our soldiers on November 2 at the forum “Community”, which is held by the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation. By the way, in such a landmark place – the Victory Museum on Poklonnaya Hill, where public organizations and volunteers gathered. Today we talked a lot about the help of volunteers, which is necessary, about the project “We are together”, which has always helped and helps.

We talked about supporting the families of our soldiers today. The conversation was not easy, because almost everyone who has relatives or friends today is either in the zone of a special military operation, or in places of coordination and training was there. But everyone came to the same opinion: the entry point of information from the fighters today is the family. Who will the fighter call? Of course, mom or wife. Of course, in fact, the family is the first to find out what is missing, what worries and worries the fighters there on the front line today.

On the other hand, we understand today what difficulties families face here. These are issues, of course, of psychological, material, economic, organizational, informational assistance. Maria Fyodorovna is right to talk about information assistance, because we should not give our families offense to anyone today. We have to save them, we have to help them.

It was at this site that everyone agreed that we need to work together, we need to organize in order to improve this assistance – both to families and to fighters. We decided to create a committee of families of soldiers of the Fatherland, and the organizers were just our leading Russian organizations – these are “Women of Russia”, “Union of Military Families”, “Union of Women of Russia”, “Mothers of Russia”. It is clear that it is not easy, because there are quite a lot of issues that need to be solved, and solved today.

We have already built a relationship with Tatiana Nikolaevna Moskalkova, the Commissioner for Human Rights, but, Vladimir Vladimirovich, we really need help in building a dialogue with the Ministry of Defense today, because there are a lot of questions from families to this department. Of course, these are the security issues that were just discussed today, these are the issues of missing persons, these are the issues when they get in touch. This is not a matter of three days or a week, when it is no longer just anxiety and anxiety in the family, and here, of course, there are questions that need to be answered. This is a question of interaction with the Ministry of Health today, this is a question of interaction with the social block today. That is, everything that worries both families and fighters today.

Of course, for our part, we have already started work here, and our mothers have joined the Popular Front hotline, because we understand each other like no one else, we understand what we are talking about.

Of course, we will now make New Year’s holidays for children from families who participate in a special military operation. We plan to organize committees in the regions, because there are a lot of issues that can be resolved at the regional level. And we have just announced that we will create a committee, appeals have already been sent to us.

One of them was from Khakassia, where, unfortunately, – Nadezhda Uzunova is present here, – let’s just say that the attitude was not quite right to families and to explain the issues of regional support measures that exist. It is necessary to speak honestly and directly and give, among other things, tools – where to turn and how if this help is not received for some reason. Therefore, of course, there are questions, and here, most importantly, we want to become part of the solution, not part of the problem, we want to help. And here, Mr President, is a very big request to support us in our work.

And, no less important, we definitely need specific people assigned to us from each of the ministries and departments, some are able to answer questions and make decisions. Today we need to do everything quickly, without red tape, without delay. Therefore, here is such a request.

And of course, thank you very much for your trust, because today I am a member of the HRC, the Human Rights Council, and I think this will help today in implementing the plans that we have today, namely in helping both families and fighters.

Vladimir Putin: Yulia Alexandrovna, is that what you called yourself – the Committee of Families of Soldiers of the Fatherland?

Yu.Belekhova: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: Have you formalized it somehow? Is this already some kind of legal entity created?

Yu.Belekhova: Yes, we have already been created. You know, we are quite open here, because there are a lot of organizations that are somehow spontaneously and incomprehensibly formed. We are talking about what we are, we have an official legal status, we will not disappear from the open spaces tomorrow, as, you know, when groups are opened in social networks, and then they disappear somewhere, and families remain without answers to questions, they were simply thrown into an incomprehensible information war. And here we are, we have an official legal status, we have registered. And already today our mothers are helping, answering questions and sharing the experience and information that they have.

Vladimir Putin: You know, I will instruct the Administration and the Government, as you requested, to establish some kind of contact with you directly for the purpose of support. We will definitely do this.

Yu.Belekhova: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: And in the course of the work there, some issues will be clarified that require special attention, require assistance from administrative bodies. Now it’s hard for me to just say – it’s clear about what questions arise, but in each particular case, probably, you need to take a special approach.

In general, this work should be individual. It always becomes the most effective when it is not conducted in general, but individually with each specific person and with each specific family. But each case is still unique, I mean the composition of the family, family problems, the social status of the family, housing issues, receiving all the necessary forms of support required by law, and sometimes even not required, but necessary, especially at the regional level.

I do not know if you have noticed whether it sounds on the air when I have some public events – I do not have time to watch what is happening and how – but always at meetings with the heads of regions, I either start with this, or end with this: I always demand from my colleagues in the regions, from the heads of the regions of attentive, informal, personal participation in the lives of the families of our guys who are fighting. Always. But in the vast majority of cases, I know that work is being built, not only in the capitals, but also in other cities, in almost all subjects.

The fact that you told me that in Khakassia they somehow treat this the wrong way, it’s strange for me, to be honest, but we will check what is really happening there. This work is certainly in demand.

You said it right, I even wrote down that the entry point of all information is the family. People write there, call there when there is an opportunity, and there appears the most objective information about what is happening, and what kind of help and support is needed.

Of course, we will help you, without any doubt.

Yu.Belekhova: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: We just need some of your data, but I’m sure it will be, we will take it. Phones and so on.

You are welcome.

Zh.Agueva: I came from Chechnya, Aguyeva Zharadat Khozhaevna. The mother of two fighters who are currently on the front line. One is Aguyev Ismail, [battalion] “West”, battalion commander, and the second is the head of the Kurchaloyevsky district police department.

Our sons voluntarily went there for the first time, now for the second time, too, with their team, squad. Ismail is wounded, has not yet corrected his leg, walks on crutches, walks on a cane, fights in the Donbass. Maryinka, where they are. I am proud that my sons freely, voluntarily went for the first time. I don’t regret at all that they are there.

Our President Ramzan Kadyrov fully provides everyone with everything they need: clothes, shoes. Not that Ramzan Kadyrov provides them – even wives and children at home – with everything, helps everyone and the guys there too, food, food. Not that the military carries – even Ukrainian people are constantly getting humanitarian aid. Our president is very proud of our guys, looks at everything, does everything necessary. He does not leave his sons, husbands who are in the zone of a special military operation, helps all their families. We don’t have any street children in Chechnya, there are no hungry people, there are no needy people. Our president provides all mothers with everything they need, provides everything. Our guys are doing fine.

I’m proud. I have another son at home. If I have to go, I’ll send the third one. It’s the second time they’ve gone. Our guys who left Chechnya don’t need anything and they don’t need anything. Basically, they have everything. Our president is the best, I think. General – we don’t say. Especially his own. I am grateful to Putin that in 2000, thanks to him and the late Akhmat-Hadji, everything was done to end the war on our side.

We have already survived the war twice, I know. I had one missing in that war, now I have three at the moment. I am proud of my nation and my people – everyone. We have no one in Chechnya who is starving, in need, with outstretched hands. He constantly provides everyone with everything they need, all the children, all the mothers, he does not leave them, he provides everything they need. I’m proud of him.

Thank you too, Putin, that at that time with Akhmat-Hadji Kadyrov you also helped our people a lot so that this war would not happen.

I have nothing more to say.

Vladimir Putin: Zharadat Khozhaevna, thank you for your kind words. What happened on Chechen soil, and the normalization that took place, is primarily the merit of the Chechen people themselves and Akhmat-Hadji, who gave his life for his people.

Zh.Aguyeva: Yes, my people.

Vladimir Putin: For the Chechens. He gave his life for it.

We will see Ramzan Akhmatovich now, I have a working meeting with him, I will tell him your words.

Zh.Agueva: He is very much for his people. What he said – our guys are all mine, I think, even now they will give their lives for him, for his word. It’s the second time I’ve had them there, on the front line.

Vladimir Putin: The fact that you have two sons fighting there is well done.

Zh.Aguyeva: I have two grandchildren there too. And also with our husband’s surname, relatives, nephews, a cousin, four more of our namesakes, the Aguevs, there are a lot of them.

Vladimir Putin: Zharadat Khozhaevna, tell your third son that the order of the Supreme Commander–in-Chief is to stay at home. Let him control the situation in the family.

Zh.Agueva: I told those two: leave the third one for now, we need the third one here at home.

Vladimir Putin: I will tell Ramzan now that the third one is at home, controlling the situation.

Zh.Agueva: And so thank you, thank you very much.

And I am very grateful to my president, my people, my nation, for not leaving us, helping everyone. It doesn’t even happen that he didn’t help somewhere, that we didn’t get something. You can come to Chechnya at any time to find out whether my words are true or not.

Vladimir Putin: I know the difference between today’s Terrible and the Terrible that I saw from the side of a combat helicopter when I flew over the city in 1999 and in 2001.

Zh.Agueva: Yes, it has blossomed, it is a very beautiful city, the sights are very beautiful. This is thanks to our people, the president.

Vladimir Putin: I remember the square for a minute – complete ruins, as it was in Stalingrad.

Z.Agueva: Yes, there was nothing to catch there. We didn’t even think that it would recover like this.

Vladimir Putin: We thought more about moving the capital of Chechnya, because some believed that it was impossible to restore, everything was in ruins. Now a thriving city, chic.

Zh.Aguyeva: My grandson is also studying at Suvorov. “Grandma,” she says, “I will be 18 years old, I will also go to war with my uncles.” I say, “Wait, maybe it will end, it probably won’t reach you.” “No,” he says, “if there is, I will go.” He is studying perfectly at the Suvorov school, his grandson is already 16 years old.

Vladimir Putin: Please convey to all your loved ones, to all Chechens, the words of gratitude for that contribution to the common struggle and victory.

Zh.Agueva: I am proud of my nation and my people.

thank you.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you for what you have said and for what you have done by educating such men.

Thanks.

You are welcome.

M.Bakhilina: I am Marina Bakhilina, Sakha Republic. Also a mother of three sons.

My middle son is a career military man, as he was drafted at the age of 18, and he remained. He serves in the Airborne Forces, reconnaissance. He has been in his own since the first days.

Vladimir Putin: Airborne, right?

M.Bakhilina: Airborne Forces, 83rd Brigade.

When the special operation began, he was there from the first days. In April, he was awarded the Order of Courage.

Vladimir Putin: The Order of Courage is not given just like that.

M. Bakhilina: Yes. It was shown on TV.

He was very badly injured. But I gathered, as they say, willpower, recovered. At the moment, he is in the hospital, undergoing rehabilitation and plans to go back in January.

The eldest son was mobilized in September.

But what I want to say, I’ll be brief, I don’t know how to say much.

In a word, I raised my sons in patriotism. As they say, the party said, the Motherland said – go ahead! No one shirked from the army, everyone joined the army physically, mentally prepared. They don’t hide behind Mom’s skirt. The summons came to the son, he immediately got ready quickly – and to the assembly point. Now he is not far from the front in his own. The only thing (well, rarely, of course, we correspond) that he complains about is food, there is no hot food. Do you understand what’s going on? If our people can’t provide our soldiers with hot meals, I, as a master of sports and a shooting CMC, would love to go there, to the front line to cook. And what’s funny, really.

We have, excuse me, please, in Yakutsk, a lot of mothers want to go to help – someone as a nurse, someone as a cook. There is nothing so shameful. We have some young people running, hiding… Why are we worse than our sons, as they say?

Another question I wanted is that I would gladly go to serve, I don’t need money, my pension allows.

Last. I want to convey from the mothers, from the wives of servicemen – from them personally – a huge thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, to our Aisen Sergeyevich [Nikolayevich] and the Magansky Possovet for providing material and moral support to servicemen.

You know, everything was done so quickly, quickly and efficiently. I don’t know how it is in the city, but it seems that I go, I also collect parcels – it seems that all of us received compensation for 200-300 thousand, vegetable sets. In Magan, for example, in general, the administration of Magan has oriented itself very well: someone needs water, someone needs to clean the yard, someone needs to bring firewood – in that spirit. So many of us are very well provided for. About this, of course, thank you very much.

Yes, and the wish is for some moms who hide their children: it is not necessary to decide for them, the children themselves should, and not run, pay off and the like.

That’s it, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Thank you very much.

Vladimir Putin: Marina Konstantinovna, you said that you don’t know how to speak. You are able and speak in such a way that God grant everyone, in a meaningful and in form, very intelligible. But the most important thing is not even what you say, but what you do, and the results of your work are in your sons. This work is of the highest quality and the highest standard, if you have such children. I congratulate you on this and thank you.

As for Aisen Sergeevich, he is an experienced leader, a very sensitive person, he is persistent, able to achieve results. Your republic is gorgeous. It is not only huge in territory, it is inhabited by very talented people, different people, different nationalities, the people are very melodious, interesting, beautiful. A rich republic.

What you said about hot meals on the front line. It would seem that the issues have already been mostly resolved – they were just talking about what seems to be normal with this, but nevertheless, it means that not everything is normal. Let’s see what you need and where you need to do what additionally. First.

Second. Thank you for your willingness to take part in the combat work of your guys. But it seems to me that first the relevant departments in the Ministry [of Defense] should restore order there. With your submission, we will do this and strengthen this work, of course. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this, including recently. Therefore, what I have heard from you is very important.

I understand that you have everything set up in the republic, there are no questions to the local and regional authorities.

Mikhail Bakhilina: Yes, we have a very good setup, well done.

Vladimir Putin: (addressing Yu.Yulia Alexandrovna, keep in mind that there are good examples of the work of regional authorities.

Yu.Belekhova: Vladimir Vladimirovich, there is…

Vladimir Putin: And it is necessary to replicate it.

Yu.Belekhova: And it is necessary to replicate, and we will, and show, because there are really examples of good regional work and caring for families. Why do we want to create a regional committee on the ground – because in terms of issues, maybe even the authorities need to be told somewhere how this is done, how it is implemented. Because after all, there is concern for families today and help them in different situations they face.

Vladimir Putin: You need to tell me somewhere. And positive examples. They just need to be replicated, to show how it is possible and how it is necessary to work here.

O.Shigina: That’s what I’m talking about.

Vladimir Putin (addressing O. Shigina): Yes, please, Olesya Nikolaevna.

O.Shigina: Hello again. I’m sitting next to you here.

I am a documentary filmmaker, poet, mother of a son who was just on military service. But when all this started, he immediately said, “Mom, who if not me?” and signed up for those who are ready to serve the Motherland.

When I found out about my son’s decision, of course, poems and everything else flowed like a river. But most importantly, I realized that I would go to Donbass to understand what was happening there, I would personally go myself, I should see everything myself and understand who these guys are – the same as mine, or maybe what they say in the media…

Vladimir Putin: Not so.

O.Shigina: After all, however, at that time it was all very acute: “no war” and so on.

And, you know, I ended up making a movie. I went by myself, even without a bulletproof vest. The film is called “The Brave”.

Vladimir Putin: Was the film made?

O.Shigina: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: And on what technique, how did you shoot?

O.Shigina: I’m basically a documentary filmmaker, I have the technique. Not the most sophisticated, because the operators did not go with me.

Vladimir Putin: Are you a professional director?

O.Shigina: Yes. I have about 20 movies.

And when I arrived there, you know, as a mother, as a director, as a person who still passes through the soul, I, of course, saw that there were holy guys there. I saw this look of standing before death, before God in the first place. That is, they all understand that they are there for Russia. There is no Chechnya, – they are for all of us, for all together.

I told the women today (I deviate a little from what I wanted to say) how three prayed in one trench. A Dagestani man told me how the three of them, wounded in the trench, prayed in three languages – Chechen, Dagestani and Russian. The Dagestani man was holding a Spas Not made with hands – the flag that I gave him – and says: “I will wear it right under my heart.” And he read to me “Our Father” in Russian.

You see, we are raising Chechnya together, we are all together, and we are raising Donbass together now. And my first film was about the militia, about these people who have been standing on the borders there for eight years. (Addressing N. Pshenichkina.) About your son. Of course, these are heroes, these are our saints.

I have such a poem: “Time of times will hide the former power by turning milestones, // Sin will be called sin again, Russian – Poltava borscht. // The regiments of warriors and saints are growing every minute. // The Time of Times and its sons are sight for the blind.”

This vision [will become] now for the “blind”, for many blinded, whose brains have been clouded by these fakes, these endless terrible information attacks. To fight them off, we need to call up regiments of people who are ready to serve the Motherland in the same way as our sons serve.

We, patriots – documentarians, poets, writers, actors – are real patriots, we are ready to join the ranks of those who will create the cinema that the viewer is waiting for, and he is waiting for him.

A big request. For example, 20 of my films. It’s impossible to break into television, it’s impossible to break into cinemas, you know. The viewer says: where are your films, why don’t we see them? We want to see them. This wall needs to be breached.

By the way, when I went to shoot, I didn’t even have cameramen, the film is called “Absolute Life”. That is, the camera is shaking in my hands, I’m not a military commander, but I understand everything now, I understand how to shoot there.

Thanks to the Foundation for Cultural Initiatives, when I went there [to Donbass], for the second time when I went, I applied before that – this is a social elevator. Because the Ministry of Culture is very difficult to break through. And here I felt that the social elevator exists. That is, the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives picked up my project, they already helped me, and I felt that I was together with the state, that I was not working alone, you know? Just as our sons should now feel there that they are no longer alone, that they have uniforms [provided], that they are expected here. They are wounded, crippled – we will give them a “road map” of how to live on. And this is my first film about the militia coming out soon. I hope it will be shown.

Now I have conceived three more films, they have already suffered, I already understand how to make them. This is just the brave regular army, about our valiant regiments, in one of which my son serves. You just need to know – there is a lot of criticism of the army now, and it often has the right to be, but these valiant regiments exist, which are the honor and conscience of our army. They are there, we know them. I know that you know these commanders, brigade commanders, who are all wounded, with a mangled face, but they will lay down their lives for the guys, they will not leave them. And where the brigade commander does not know how to do this, the guys have problems there, and if the brigade commander is like our guys, everything is fine there. And they will reach you, and they will get everything. There would be more such brigade commanders for us, and I really want to make a film about them.

The second film I conceived about the Cossacks. Cossacks are not only here on the Don, we have Cossacks from Vladivostok to the south. And it is also very important that we have stopped dividing: Don Cossack, Ural Cossack, Vladivostok Cossack. I want to make a film where the Cossacks with their songs, with their courage, with their desire to serve “the faith, the tsar and the Fatherland” will be presented with that maternal love, you know, which is in me when I shoot.

I would like to make the third film about our mobilized guys. You know, the militia tell me on the front line: “Only fools are not afraid.” And this somewhat confused look at the wires – You can’t imagine how in two months it will turn into the look of a warrior, confident that he serves the Motherland.

As one hero of the film says: “Here we have some kind of connection. Because the spirit. For Russia, for Russia.”

Vladimir Putin: Unity.

O.Shigina: For complete unity, yes.

Indeed, patriotic creative people are easy to figure out, because they have not changed their patriotic attitude to the country for the last 20 years. It is very easy to find us – we are here, we are ready to serve the Fatherland. As it is written in my films: “Cinema in the service of the Fatherland.” This is the last frame always after all the movies.

I shoot about mothers with many children, about our soldiers or about people who really create in Russia – I have such films about heroes. I would really like a powerful festival to appear… I’m sorry, of course I’m worried anyway, because there’s so much to say inside.

Vladimir Putin: No, you are very informative, very interesting.

O.Shigina: But the excitement, you know, it is present. And so.

For how many years have festivals like Artdokfest and Kinotavr tormented our people with obscene content, films made with dislike – there is even a film of the same name called Dislike – namely films made about dislike of Russia. We have to call those now – and there the guard is standing and waiting: call us, we are ready to shoot about love for Russia, shoot about our heroes, write about them, live there, in the Donbass, and write books. I personally am ready to just sit in this trench and write about them.

And I hope that this institute – how do we get there – will appear, that the Ministry of Culture will begin to hear us. Because institutions such as the Internet Development Institute, the society “Knowledge” – this, as I understand it, you get directly to the people who hear you. It’s so rare, you know. And it’s such a blessing that we, patriotic writers, poets and filmmakers, began to be heard. That we are no longer “oh, somehow you have everything too there.” They started to hear us.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, the fact that I am here also shows that this social elevator… I think that the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives is still your initiative. And if Zharadat [Aguyeva] is very grateful to the Chechen leader, then, first of all, I think that everything that is being built and happening in Russia is our President who manages it, acts in coordination with people on the ground. If there is a competent leader there [in the region], there is also such a phrase from the front, you know, it does not matter that the company does not think anything, as long as the commander is not a fool. If you are not a fool on the ground, everyone hears all your orders, and everything is done there. Just like in social bodies. This ladder should appear.

Therefore, I have a big request (I formulate a lot, as a creative person I talk a lot).

First, I want to make these films with maternal love, you know, through love. I need the assistance of the Ministry of Defense for this, because it is almost impossible to break into such units. I am ready to shoot on the front line, I have already done this, I have experience now. I’m not afraid as much as possible.

I would really like other documentarians, poets, writers to have access to cinemas, to television, to leading TV channels, so that leading TV channels do not get carried away only with their entertainment content, but finally begin to see us.

I would really like to create a film festival “In the service of the Fatherland”. It doesn’t have to be a movie just about its heroes.

The heroes of my film build airplanes in the village, in an abandoned village they build airplanes, and they take off from chamomile fields. Isn’t that a hero? Or another hero of the film is an inventor who creates the most complex technologies in Russia, which are among the top five. Isn’t that a hero? Hero.

Therefore, I ask you. I am now speaking for the entire creative intelligentsia. I know what everyone really wants to say. Mr President, we are counting on you very much.

Thanks.

Vladimir Putin: Good. Thanks.

In this regard, you know what thoughts came to my mind right now when you spoke about people of creative professions who are patriotic, and said words that some of the cultural events tormented our people.

Why did this happen? I can say it’s very simple. Because we were in a state after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it seemed to us – to many – that a sweet life would begin now, and tomorrow we would live like in Paris or somewhere else. Although now it turns out that many people do not want to live like in Paris.

O.Shigina: Absolutely, yes.

Vladimir Putin: And it was thought that it would be good there. In fact, this is not the case at all, there is a different cultural code. Probably, everything is possible, but the way we celebrate Mother’s Day, the way we are gathered together now and talking about the role of a woman, the role of a mother – in many places there they don’t even know what “mom” is. Really? There’s just “parent number one” and “parent number two”. And there are dozens of genders being measured there, some kind of “transformers” – I don’t even understand what they are talking about. This is not our culture at all, this is a completely different code of some kind.

What Olesya Nikolaevna said, that there are guys from Dagestan…

O.Shigina: Yes, it is a mixture of cultures, and the war, of course, is for spirituality, for our spirituality.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, of course. Our unique civilization is the unification of people of different ethnic groups, different cultures and different faiths into one single whole. This is the first.

Second. At the turn of the 2000s, 90s, it seemed to us that everything would be fine, but it turned out that this was not the case at all. Moreover, we began to live and play in some strange clearing and enthusiastically indulged in the fact that they were trying to control us. And in the end, those who tried to control us – in general, thanks to their efforts, we found ourselves in this situation, including in the zone of a special military operation. After all, they brought it to this.

I understand that we are not here for serious conversations on political issues, but still, if there had not been a coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014, there would have been nothing, there simply would have been nothing. And so they had a lot of influence over this country, and after 2014 they actually took control of all the authorities and administrations in fact.

And who are they? The Banderites are essentially. And what is Bandera? Neo-Nazis. Bandera was Hitler’s henchman, shot both Russians, and, by the way, Poles, Jews, all in a row on Hitler’s instructions. And today they have elevated such people to the rank of national heroes, that’s what our guys are fighting today in the zone of a special military operation, that’s who. And those who oppose them, many do not even understand what they are doing, do not understand that they are being used simply as pawns in someone else’s game. They are playing someone else’s game, but we have to fight for our interests, for our people, for our country. That’s what we’re doing.

And what happened in previous years was largely due to the fact that we played as if we had always lived in someone else’s clearing. And today’s events are a path to some kind of inner cleansing and renewal. And of course, people like you, people of creative professions who think like you, of course, they have always been in demand, and in such difficult moments for the life of the country in particular.

But since everything has developed in a certain way over the previous years, clearing a clearing is quite difficult for you, believe me, even from my level. Because it’s deep enough there everything sits. But we will definitely do it.

O.Shigina: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, we will. And of course, as for the assistance of the Ministry of Defense, you will be provided with assistance. I don’t even doubt it at all. How to organize this work so that it is with a good result and as safe as possible – we will think about it and try to do it. Ok?

O.Shigina: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: As for the rental and so on. You said that it is difficult to do this through the Ministry of Culture. Probably, there is also its own bureaucracy there. But the Ministry of Culture will also get involved. The Minister [of Culture Olga Lyubimova] is also a woman of patriotic beliefs, views, a very active young woman, already experienced. I’ll talk to her too, we’ll connect her.

O.Shigina: Yes, now is the time for documentaries. By the way, Russian documentary filmmakers are considered to be among the best in the world, because the level of penetration into the problem is very high among documentary filmmakers.

Vladimir Putin: Yes.

And what you said about the guys you saw there, practically on the front line, is, of course, worth a lot. And it was useful for me to hear it now.

O.Shigina: I can show you.

N. Pshenichkina: We watched this movie. She sent it to us.

Vladimir Putin: I will ask you to [send] too, please.

Are we going to finish, everyone? Or something else?

Please, please.

L. Rubanik: Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

I am a mother of seven children from St. Petersburg, Rubanik Lyubov Sergeevna.

Vladimir Putin: We have such families in St. Petersburg – it’s nice to hear that. Not only in Chechnya, not only in Dagestan, but also in St. Petersburg.

L. Rubanik: We have six sons and an adopted daughter.

Vladimir Putin: That’s great.

L. Rubanik: The eldest two sons, Dmitry and Daniel, have already served in the army, and are now ready to go on mobilization. The middle son, Panteley, went to the military enlistment office himself in June and joined the army. In October, he signed an agreement, and is now in preparation. Vladislav is also with us now, in December, going to his brother’s service. The two youngest children are 11 and 12 years old.

I would like to tell you about patriotic education, since our grandparents went through the entire blockade. Grandfather was a hearing invalid, but from the age of 14 he worked at the Baltic factory, then he reached Berlin, although he was deaf, he fought. And a few years ago, he was already 92 years old, our dad passed away. He also devoted his whole life to the Navy, served in Murmansk. It turns out that this is the grandfather of my children, so we have such an upbringing, initially all children are patriots, everyone knows what our Homeland is.

When we were at school in our time, we had initial military training, we were proud that we were Octobrists, then pioneers, and, of course, everyone was happy and aspired to be in the Komsomol.

I would like to tell you a little about our organization. This is the charity foundation “Tide” of the city of St. Petersburg, which is part of the All-Russian movement “Mothers of Russia”, St. Petersburg branch.

Due to the recent events in the country, of course, we could not stay away either. We do our best to help internally displaced persons who come to St. Petersburg, help pregnant women, and also support the families of [participants] of the SVO who find themselves in a difficult life situation.

Just the other day, one mother turned. She has to give birth to a baby one of these days, and the others are babies, she says: “There is no one to meet me now – dad is fighting – from the maternity hospital.” And our volunteers, respectively, will go to conduct, meet. This is our organizational work. The older children, until they had to mobilize now, they also help us as much as possible as volunteers – they work on targeted assistance, we support families.

What I would like to say, of course, about the “Committee of Mothers of the Fatherland” together with the All-Russian People’s Front. I would like to develop with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Defense exactly step–by-step support for military personnel – post-traumatic support for those guys who return from military operations.

So that we can develop support for everyone while disability registration is underway, and psychological assistance to the family, which we just talked about, and help for these guys, because many, of course, fall into depression. We also have a psychologist at the foundation’s site who also works with families of internally displaced persons. A lot of mothers and even teenagers are in such a difficult state, and the families of the mobilized also tell about their nervous state, and this help is needed.

Vladimir Putin: This problem of rehabilitation, which we have already talked about, is multifaceted, multifaceted. This is not only a purely medical, but also psychological help should be social. I have already said that it is very important, I think, to help people get additional skills, knowledge, some additional education, to help with employment. This is a whole range of works.

And I have already marked, of course, it needs to be done. And of course, Lyubov Sergeevna, with the help of your structures, public organizations, yours, as Yulia Alexandrovna said, we will support everyone in every possible way.

L. Rubanik: Yes. Only together we can win.

Vladimir Putin: Yes, I absolutely agree with you.

L. Rubanik: I would like to say just a few more words that only Russian mothers give birth to the best sons and daughters of our Motherland.

Vladimir Putin: So it is, of course. That’s the way it is, it’s true.

N. Uzunova: Hello, Vladimir Vladimirovich!

Republic of Khakassia, my name is Nadezhda. And as Nina Petrovna has already said, as we all believe, on September 30, an important event really happened for our whole country, and I was lucky enough to be on Red Square, take part and be in this united impulse with our whole country. There are more children in our country, a large number of families have been added. And what is it? It means responsibility, a huge responsibility for these people.

Donbass is familiar to me firsthand, it has been familiar to me since 2017. As part of my favorite organization “Combat Brotherhood”, of which I am a member, under the leadership of Alexander Vekshin, head of the Khakass branch, we evacuated seriously ill and wounded children from the territory of Donbass. And then I saw with my own eyes for the first time this pain of Shakhtersk, Donetsk, Gorlovka, when you pull children out of basements, when you have boys, girls…

Olesya is making a film about the brave, and at that time I had short films, small ones, which we are now showing in schools, because peers understand better than peers – we have developed this system. And when we shot these short films, we shot them with the same name: the name of the child is the name of the film.

My first film is “Vovka”. The boy is ten years old, he takes me to the basement and says: you know, I know how to lie down, I know how to sit, I know how to stand on orders, as I need to, as a soldier, but I’m afraid not to survive this moment. Artem, whose sister died in front of his eyes. How can you forgive it, how can you forget it? And someone also pressed this button when it exploded. Vadim. I know everyone by name.

And I am a mother with many children, this will not surprise anyone here, we are all well done, I also raise foster children myself, alone. Therefore, of course, there are no other people’s children, definitely. And from that moment I decided to help, I decided to go forward.

Recently I was in St. Petersburg, but it is already morally impossible to rest, because you have been rebuilt, you have been rebuilt for a completely different task. And we visited the hospitals of our fighters – the 442nd, VMA. And of course, we visited with our fraternal republic, the Republic of Tyva, because Khakassia and Tyva are native republics, we are very closely connected.

Vladimir Putin: Side by side.

N. Uzunova: And with the women from the fraternity of the Republic of Tyva of St. Petersburg, of course, we visited our guys. You know, even here our unity is manifested. In what? How to please the fighters, how to surprise them? We decided to cook a national dish. And of course, with these buckets of pies, when you go into these wards, communicate with the fighters, somewhere you hear, you know, this: “How delicious, how at home.” Well, what do you need more? When you realize that you are the conductor of the love of these moms who can’t be with our guys today.

When the mobilization began, of course, all the women of our country experienced a great sense of anxiety, this is unequivocal, this is one hundred percent. But at the same time, having literally survived for a couple of hours, I got up and wrote down an appeal, and it is about the unification of forces in our republic, consolidation, female power in women’s energy, that we cannot give up, and the last thing is to lose heart, you can’t do this.

And we began to gather the sons of Khakassia. I am sure that women in other regions did the same. We collected from backpacks to their destination, to their place of deployment with prayers, with provisions, with food. All women united, indeed. It’s such a force, it’s such a power, it’s such a charge. And you realize that you’re getting so strong.

When the guys left, you see everyone off, and 1400 people left us. Then I followed them to the exercises, to the training grounds, accompanying them in hopes, because everything was happening quickly, and some questions and problems remained. Of course, you solve these issues on the ground.

We will go further, Vladimir Vladimirovich, do not doubt, we already know, that’s for sure.

Of course, there are difficulties, as in any problem, case, new case, complicated. Of course, I will tell you this, that in Khakassia everyone still works 24 to 7: both the regional authorities, the municipal authorities, and the residents of the Republic of Khakassia are those who have really united today. There is no caring person.

What difficulties there are, now, probably, I will tell you about them a little and very briefly.

For example, it seems to me, based on experience, because you work all the time, the fighters are always in touch. If I used to ask how the day went, only with my children, sons, now I understand that my evening is increasing. They call, speak, report, roughly speaking, how it is going, what is needed, how to help, what needs to be delivered to the front line, because the list is changing: uniforms are over, there are special communications facilities, other moments.

What is happening on the ground with regional support and assistance, why Yulia made an emphasis. I will explain to you: you need to hear every family, of course. Today, the common task and our task – people who work directly with families – we understand and pay attention to each family. You can’t forget it here, you can’t miss these moments.

At the moment, it seems to me, the hearings before the adoption of the budget are open, and it is impossible to adopt a regional budget without aspirations, without wishes and without problems of mobilized families. They can, they should take part, and then there will be no problems.

And what problems do you get? The following problems are obtained: we are making amendments. What is an amendment? The correction is ten days. So, for ten days some family will not receive certain payments.

At the moment, I will tell you that everything has been settled. Just Julia was making an emphasis, already next Tuesday 29 of these families will receive a regional payment, that is, everything is fine. Because it was a bureaucratic delay, again a residence permit – such moments. I would like to emphasize once again that the topic is new, a complex topic.

Another point that I would like to draw attention to is, of course, benefits. The Government of the Republic of Khakassia has developed a large, serious package of additional measures, in addition to financial payments. But when any benefit is being developed, its mechanism must be worked out. Again, for example, coal. It is clear that we have no problems with coal in the republic, I mean with its quantity, but the mechanism of study was not fully completed. It turns out as follows: coal begins to be issued under this regional system only literally now, and it is already cold in Siberia.

But, again, I will tell you that not a single family was left without him, because we have partners, sponsors, the work of the heads of municipalities, who are very quickly resolving issues on the ground today. Naturally, Khakassia is a small family, and, of course, issues are resolved in a fairly fast mode.

And there is one more point that I would also like to draw attention to. It is clear that everyone is trying, all municipalities. We have 12 municipalities that were affected by the mobilization, and each head of the municipality, of course, tries for his municipality, and there is a difference in benefits. And if there is a difference, it means somewhere less. Of course, next week we will discuss these points, because the heads are always in contact and in direct communication. Of course, we believe that there should be no difference. These are very important points.

And you know, Vladimir Vladimirovich, very strong women have gathered here today. Women who can really show by their example how to live, how to educate, because we are guided, of course, by the examples, probably, of their grandmothers, grandfathers who forged Victory in the rear, unequivocally. That is, we have a good school, a good example.

But no matter how strong we are, we need a strong man’s shoulder – your shoulder, your support, support for our committee. Thank you very much for receiving us today, from us, from mothers. We are moving forward, we are moving forward with our families, because families are all the families of our mobilized guys, volunteers, of whom, by the way, we have a lot. Indeed, there are a lot of them, and we are proud of them.

And, of course, I also can’t help but send you greetings from our fighters, because they talk about it, they know that I’m here today. From all the fighters, from all the guys and volunteers of the Republic of Khakassia, I wish you a huge hello. Please accept it.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much.

The issue, it would seem, is such a household one, but it is also significant – these are benefits and their uniform application, mechanisms and speed of decision-making. To do this, you don’t even need any complicated decisions within the budget process, you just need to foresee everything in advance, and this will be done automatically, there are no problems here. But nevertheless, I still marked it, I will pay attention to it.

N. Uzunova: Thank you very much.

Vladimir Putin: And as for associations – those that are created at the call of the heart, as they say, we have already said here, I already see several such associations here, representatives of these associations are present. And yours, of course, too.

N. Uzunova: I’m talking about our committee, it’s already ours.

Vladimir Putin: Oh, is it common?

N. Uzunova: Of course, this is our common cause. We are burning with our common cause.

Vladimir Putin: Okay, I’m sorry.

N.Uzunova: The committee that Yulia spoke about, I ask you to support it. We are already active, we are already working on the ground, we have experience.

Vladimir Putin: Everything is clear.

Are we going to finish?

What I would like to say in conclusion. Nadezhda Alexandrovna said that support is needed, on the one hand. On the other hand, there will certainly be support, as I have already said.

But you know what I want to tell you: that the most important support is your position and how – I will not be afraid of any big words here – you have lived up to now, and how you have brought up your guys. This is the main foundation and foundation of Russia’s existence.

I’m not just talking about you, about those present, but in general about our mothers, about our mothers. This is the main foundation on which the country stands. This is everything – this is our history, our culture, our traditions, this is confidence in the future of the country, confidence in our victories in the broadest sense of the word, not only within the framework of this military operation.

As Marina Fedorovna said, and I understand that you were talking about the future of the country, that it should be different. In this, if you have noticed, despite all the issues related to the special military operation, we do not change our plans for the development of the state, for the development of the country, for the development of the economy, its social sphere, for national projects. We have huge, big plans, but they can be implemented if we work together to solve all the problems, all the issues that the country faces – both within the framework of this special operation, and within the framework, as we said earlier, of our everyday work.

The most important guarantee of our success is unity. The unity that Olesya Nikolaevna spoke about here, about which Zharadat Khozhaevna spoke, Suna Neifelovna spoke, all from all regions, from our Cossack regions, from new regions, from those who have always believed that they are the very heart and foundation of the Russian state. All this together: the so–called periphery, the center, the south, the north, the east, the west – this is all our huge country Russia.

But this is not only a territory and not so much a territory – it is primarily people, their traditions, their culture, their history, which is passed down from generation to generation and absorbed by all of us with mother’s milk.

All thanks to you.

Thank you very much

Sabotage, terrorist and other diversionary attacks are a real risk for Russia (+addendum)

August 18, 2022

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Interesting news two days in a row.  First, the Russian MoD did conclude that the explosions at the Russian airfield in Crimea where the result of a diversionary operation (I use the term “diversionary” in the Russian sense of “diversiia” meaning sabotage/wrecking).  And today, the Russians have announced that they have arrested two employees of the Zaporozhiie nuclear plant (one guard and one engineer!) who were providing the Ukrainians with targeting coordinates and strike correction.  Now Russia is warning that a major strike on this nuclear plant would have catastrophic consequences.

My purpose today is not to discuss the situation around the ZNP, but to treat this as a tip of a much bigger iceberg.

So far, only my friend Andrei Martyanov has mentioned the very real risks of sabotage and/or terrorist attacks by Ukrainian diversionary groups, including the possible sabotage of the Moskva cruiser and the attack on the airfield in Crimea.  As usual, Andrei Martyanov is spot on.  What I want to do next is to expand a little on this topic in my favorite bullet-style format.

• First, it is simply undeniable that the Ukronazi SBU/GUR have proven that they can, and have, conducted very effective diversionary attacks, including the murder of plenty of LDNR leaders.  Sometimes the Ukronazis used special SBU/GUR units, other times they have successfully recruited locals (be it in the LDNR or Crimea) to conduct acts of sabotage and terrorism.
• Second, it is important to understand that while the SMO is not a real civil war, it has definite civil war ASPECTS, beginning with the undeniable reality that there are pro-Russian segments of the population in the Nazi occupied Ukraine but also that there are pro-Urkonazi segments of the LDNR/Russian population.  Thus both sides have people capable and willing to help the other side, including anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian elements in LDNR/Russian controlled areas (including Crimea)
• Third, besides ideological motives and simple corruption, you have to understand that both the SBU/GUR and the Russian SVR/G(R)U have access to databases which allows them to blackmail a person on the other side into collaboration.  They can use compromising information of any activity (past or present) which can, if made public, get a person in a lot of trouble, but they also can pressure family members, they can even directly threaten and cajole someone into collaboration.  Finally, there are a lot of poor and destitute people on both sides, and they need money badly, maybe not to purchase a multi-million dollar yacht but to, for example, get medical treatment for a family member.  Western special services are very good at spotting and using such people.
• Fourth, as with any other conflict, when a war occurs, there is going to be some people who will benefit from it, but there is always going to be those who will lose a lot and who might be really unhappy about that.  Resentful people make for great recruits for special services (most Soviet defectors betrayed their country not for money, though some did, but because they fell unfairly treated by their superiors or the Soviet state).
• Five, special services are very skilled at 1) spotting vulnerabilities and 2) making use of them.  Since, by definition, humans being humans, there will be such vulnerable people on both sides of the conflict.
• So far, the Ukrainians have already made extensive use of such diversionary tactics, while the Russians have not (at least as far as we know, and there is a lot we don’t know).  The point is not to call one side “good” and the other “bad”, but to realize that both sides can, and will, use such special operations to disrupt the operations, and morale, of the other side.

Now one thing which will have a HUGE impact on this is the Russian decision to basically hand out Russian passports to any Ukrainian wanting one.  No, I am NOT critical of this decision, which was made on both moral and pragmatic grounds, but I will point out that this decision will come at a very real cost: a sharp increase in the numbers of Russians citizens whose true loyalties lie not with Russia, but with the Euromaidan or even Ukronazi ideology.  There are even such people in Russia proper!

The fact that such people are only a tiny fraction of the Russian population is irrelevant: all the SBU/GUR needs is a few, maybe a few tens, of such people.

And yes, of course, this is a direct challenge to the Russian intelligence and security agencies (SVR, FSB, GUSB/MVD, FSO, G(R)U and others).  But the reality is this: no matter how good the Russian intelligence and security services are, you cannot catch absolutely everybody, and neither can you place all potentially suspicious people under 24/7 surveillance (even if you knew who these people are).  The truth is that there will always be “leakers” who will successfully elude detection and interception.  You can catch many hundred of such people, but a few will always seep through the net and they will be used by the other side.

By the way, for the West and the Nazis in Kiev to declare that all the explosions in the LDNR/Russia (including Crimea) are the result of missile attacks makes perfectly good sense!  Not only does it boost the morale of the Ukronazis (Wunderwaffe and all that), it shows the western curators of the Nazi regime in Kiev how “effective” and “combat capable” the Ukrainian military still is.  Last, but not least, giving the credit to missiles is a very logical way to try to move the spotlight away from saboteurs and terrorists.  The Russians perfectly understand that, but the folks in the West apparently not, hence the systematic dismissal of the diversionary operation by so many commentators who prefer to daydream about some super-dooper missiles and other assorted Wunderwaffen and dismiss less “sexy” acts of simple sabotage.

Bottom line is this: if the SBU/GUR managed to recruit 2 employees of the ZNP, whom else do you think they might recruit in the future (or have already recruited)?  Think about folks involved in technical maintenance, transportation, logistics, prisons and POW facilities. etc. etc. etc.  Heck, the Ukies even tried to corrupt a Su-34 pilot and have him fly his Su-34 to the Ukrainian side in exchange for a EU passport and money.  This SBU/GUR plot pathetically failed, and the Russians even managed to get some classified info about the Ukrainian air defenses, which were promptly demilitarized.  However, the main reasons here are probably double: first, Su-34 pilots are definitely a highly motivated elite type, and they are also very closely monitored by Russian counter-intelligence services.  So, maybe next time, the SBU/GUR needs to “aim” for a more modest and less protected target.

And who is to say that the next time around the SBU/GUR will fail?

Some will wonder why the Russians could not do in the Ukraine what they did in Chechnia.  There are many key differences here, including:

• Chechnia is a tiny piece of land compared to the Ukraine and it is comparatively easy to “lock”
• Chechnia’s population is dwarfed by the Ukrainian population (even after millions left)
• There is no equivalent of Ahmad Hadji Kadyrov or his son Ramzan in the Ukraine
• Chechens Takfiris never had the kind of firepower or weapons the Ukronazis do

So no, the precedent of Chechnia does not in any way imply that the Nazis in the Ukraine will be as comparatively quickly defeated as the Takfiris were.

This is a major problem for Russia and, worse, this is a problem which will not go away anytime soon.

The only thing Russians can do is to 1) prepare for a very long counter-intelligence and counter-diversionary operations lasting many years and 2) accept the reality of war for what it is and not freak out the next time the Ukronazis blow up something, be it a ship, a train, an aircraft, a bridge or any other target in the LDNR or Russia.

The one good news the Russians also need to keep in mind is that most of such diversionary/terrorist attacks are still fundamentally part of PSYOPs and are mostly designed for PR effect.  In terms of their actual impact on Russian military capabilities, it is close to zero,  just like the Israeli strikes in Syria have made exactly *zero* difference on the ground in Syria.  To really affect military operations you need to have a large, viable and sophisticated partisan/”stay behind” force, which the Ukrainians do not have, not by a long margin.  Also, to really affect military operations, such diversionary tactics need to be carefully coordinated with “regular” friendly military forces (like the Soviet partisans during WWII who closely worked with the Soviet armed forces).

So yes, this is a problem, a very unpleasant one, one which will be hard to deal with, but not one which will affect Russian military operations.  Even if the Ukronazis blow up both the Chernobyl AND Zaporozhiie NPs, this will not significantly affect the SMO or even the war between Russia and the united West.  The entire Russian military is trained, and well trained, to operate in a hostile nuclear, chemical or bacteriological environment.  As for Russian logistics, they are extremely sophisticated and highly redundant, so even if the Ukronazis blow up one node of the resupply network, it will be quickly fixed and/or easily replaced or bypassed.

That being said, I would personally recommend that we all mentally prepare for what is almost certainly about to happen in the not too distant future.  If we understand what such operation can and cannot achieve we will see them in a sober, pragmatic way, and not cave in to the hysterics (by many sides, including the Russian 6th column) which will inevitable follow any such attack.

Andrei

Addendum: with so many commentators freaking out about a potential meltdown of all the nuclear reactors at the ZNP, I would say this: the reactors themselves are far tougher to strike that the used nuclear fuel storage facilities which are not nearly as well protected.  Again, the real danger is not the one we instinctively think of first.

Ramzan Kadyrov Forms Brand New ‘Akhmat Regiment’ Within the Russian Defense Ministry

July 21, 2022

Translated by Leo V.

Ramzan Kadyrov Forms a New Regiment

National units are a long tradition of the Russian Army.

Original link:

https://nvo.ng.ru/concepts/2022-07-14/5_1197_tradition.html

Article by Sergei Kozlov, a military historian and Soviet-Afghan War Veteran.

In relation to the Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, President of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov demonstrates a solid patriotic position. And he personally oversees the activities of the national Chechen units of the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardiya) operating in Ukraine.

These units, which are often called special forces, perform the corresponding tasks: cleaning occupied territories, protecting the rear and communication between the Russian Army and the People’s Militias of the DPR and LPR.

They Showed Themselves in Battle

These units include: OMON “Akhmat-Grozny”, the 249th Separate Special Motorized Battalion “South”, the 46th Separate Brigade of Operational Purpose of the Rosgvardiya, the 141st Special Motorized Regiment of the Rosgvardiya named after Akhmat-Khadzhi Kadyrov (formerly known as “North” Battalion) and the SOBR “Akhmat”.

OMON “Akhmat-Grozny” is by far the oldest structure that operated during the first and second Chechen campaigns. In total, there are about 30 thousand people in the units.

Since these are not army units, but units of the Russian National Guard, all of them (except for the 141st Special Motorized unit) are armed only with small arms and light equipment. The 141st Regiment has combat equipment on staff.

Participating in Mariupol and Volnovakha, in the battles for Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, Chechen armed formations demonstrated a high level of discipline, field training and the will to win, achieving significant results.

Special Upbringing of Men

Information about the fighting of Chechen units regularly reaches the residents of Chechnya and causes pride among young people. At the same time, attention should be paid to the upbringing of Chechen youth, which explains the patriotic impulse among conscripts. The boy is initially brought up there as a warrior, as a man.

I remember how in 1985, a batch of young recruits arrived in our detachment in Kandahar, and among them four guys from Chechnya. Many officers were wary of them. But I selected two of the newcomers to my group and never regretted it.

One was a gunner-operator in my vehicle, and the second was a squad commander, he later became my deputy.

Of course, there are national peculiarities that need to be taken into account in communication. These people will never respect the boss just because of the position they hold. You need to prove that you really deserve respect – and then you will not find more reliable and loyal subordinates! I succeeded. The newcomers did not study in the training regiment for Spetsnaz in Pechora, but were trained in ordinary infantry training schools. But in spirit they were special forces, and they fought excellently and fearlessly.

And this is not an exception, but rather the rule. Which was later confirmed by the soldiers of the Zapad (West) Battalion, which was formed in 2003 by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (the 305th Separate Spetsnaz Detachment) and supervised by him. The battalion was commanded by Said-Magomed Kakiyev, Hero of Russia. A man of boundless courage and devotion. And the soldiers were a match for the commander. There was not a single former militant in the squad. Everyone fought against Dudayev’s regime from the very beginning.

A little later, the Vostok (East) Battalion was created under the command of Sulim Yamadayev. But in 2008, it was disbanded and the “North” and “South” Battalions were created. They became the basis for modern formations of the Rosgvardiya.

In August of the same 2008, Chechen units distinguished themselves during the operation to force Georgia to peace.

Historical Experience

The Russian Army has a wealth of experience in creating national, or, as previously said, native formations.

So, on August 23, 1914, at the beginning of the First World War, the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division was created. It was staffed by 90% Muslims – natives of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia. According to the laws of the Russian Empire, these people were not subject to military service. But being volunteers, they enlisted in the ranks of national formations.

The division fought bravely on the Southwestern Front since November 1914, its merits are great. In 1916 alone, the division conducted 16 mounted attacks. In general, the entire division accounts for the number of prisoners, four times its composition.

There is an important nuance that should be paid attention to now. As the witnesses of those events write, there was a special moral and psychological atmosphere in the division, which largely determined the relationship between its officers and riders. An important feature of the highlander rider was a sense of self-esteem and a complete absence of servility and sycophancy. Above all, it was not ranks and titles that were valued, but personal bravery and loyalty. This is confirmed by my personal observations.

And one more interesting fact. At first, the Muslims of the division were awarded St. George’s Crosses for distinction in battle, where instead of St. George, the coat of arms of the Russian Empire was depicted so as not to infringe on the feelings of the faithful. But after a while, the mountaineers demanded to be given the same awards as Christians. After all, there was a picture of dzhigit George on a horse, and not a “chicken”, as they called the coat of arms.

Following the Traditions of the Ancestors

Thus, it can be argued that the Russian Army has a long tradition of creating national units in the North Caucasus. The competent national policy pursued by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief makes it possible to use this force more widely and effectively. After all, in mid-March 2022, according to Kadyrov, a thousand volunteers went to Ukraine. At the beginning of April, another thousand, in May 600 more volunteers left for the war.

The Spetsnaz training center established in Gudermes has been training not only special forces fighters, but also has been training volunteers for months. Moreover, volunteers who specially come from all over Russia to get trained and go to war. And they are fighting as part of national units.

So don’t be surprised when you see a soldier of absolutely Slavic appearance who proudly shouts: “Akhmat – power!”

Akhmat Regiment

Now the formation of new battalions is beginning in Chechnya. But not from volunteers from all over the country and not on the basis of the Russian National Guard, but exclusively from citizens of the republic and as part of the Ministry of Defense. In total, it is planned to create four battalions under the general name “Akhmat”. According to the staffing size, we can say that the Motorized Rifle Regiment “Akhmat” is being formed, which will include the battalions: “North-Akhmat”, “South-Akhmat”, “West-Akhmat” and “East-Akhmat”.

The composition of a modern motorized rifle battalion, depending on the state, may include management and headquarters, three motorized rifle companies on either BMPs or BTRs, a tank company, one or two artillery batteries, a mortar battery, an anti-air defense platoon, an anti-tank platoon, communications platoons, reconnaissance platoons, an engineering platoon and a logistics platoon.

In order for the units to become a real force, careful training of both individual soldiers and units as a whole is needed. According to Ramzan Kadyrov, the places of formation, smoothing and training of two battalions on the territory of the republic have already been determined, bases will be deployed in Khankala for two more.

“Together with the Chairman of the Parliament of the Chechen Republic, Magomed Daudov, I visited the inner-city village of Khankala to inspect a potential building that is to be converted to the needs of two battalions being formed. An approximate location has already been chosen for the first two groups,” Kadyrov said.

The Head of the republic instructed the members of the government to prepare design and estimate documentation, to bring the necessary communications and to asphalt the roadway leading to the territory of the facility.

For the education and training of the military, all amenities are provided, starting with comfortable living and staff quarters and ending with football, volleyball, tennis and sports grounds. There will be a parade ground and a shooting range, the entire surrounding area will be equipped.

Selection of Officers

An important success factor is the competent selection of officers.

It is assumed that for the new battalions they will try to select Chechen officers who are already serving in the ranks of the Russian Army. But they may also be officers of other nationalities. Just as many officers of the Cossack army served in the Native Division at the beginning of the last century.

Special work will be required with candidates for command positions. They are obliged to study the national characteristics of the Chechen people in order to understand their subordinates. To earn their trust and respect, an officer must show that he is better, more professional, stronger and braver than his subordinates. Only then will they follow him into fire and water. At the same time, the officer must know and respect national customs.

For example, mountain customs were strong in the regiments of the [First World War] Native Division: respect for elders, hospitality, etc. This left its mark on life and service in the division.

The guests in the units of the division were welcomed as at home in the Caucasus. The young officer showed respect to his older riders – especially at a rest area, during their break. Contrary to the charter, but according to mountain customs.

It seems to me that it is appropriate to send candidates for the positions of commanders to Chechnya, where they, communicating with the residents, would study local traditions. And as commanders, they could subsequently correctly apply their power to subordinates.

For example, in the Native Division of the 1914 model, newly accepted volunteers made a solemn promise to serve throughout the war. For misconduct, a volunteer could be dismissed from the service. In this case, he lost his shoulder straps in front of the formation, his offense was reported to his native village, benefits were collected from him, weapons and uniforms were taken away. Those dismissed in this way were permanently deprived of the right to hold any elected positions.

In a combat situation, the Native Division proved to be strong, distinguished by high discipline and did not have a single case of desertion before the February Revolution.

The use of such educational techniques will help to form and prepare a new combat-ready unit in a short time. Which is what I sincerely desire for their command, and personally to Ramzan Kadyrov.

The disintegration of Western society – visible to the naked eye

July 02, 2022

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by Guilherme Wilbert

While we notice the closest integration among emerging countries, we notice a certain disparity among the richest, first-world countries, because they may not seem like it, but they also have internal problems that cannot always be fought. And the most recent of these is inflation, with an unprecedented rise in prices.

The middle class, the main target of the Great Reset enthusiasts, is beginning to feel prices rising more and more, even though they don’t fully agree with the war at the moment, which is impressive if you consider that public opinion is of little concern to the leaders who are driving the economic-military and diplomatic disaster in Europe.  The most practical example of this is recent with the Nordics joining NATO without any referendum or popular poll within the countries’ society. And the argument to be used I can already imagine: “But democracy is representative, William! If the people vote for politician x, it’s because they agree with his platform.” Yes. But that is half right. Not entirely.

Democracy, especially representative democracy, has a serious flaw, precisely in terms of representation.  Politicians who are not faithfully committed to the objectives of the nation, of the homeland, but, unfortunately, are rather vain, cause a distortion in the etymological sense of the term “representative democracy”, because who would it represent? Not the people!  And one of the causes of the wrong votes that the people usually give (considering totally clean elections) is due to the fact that it is not invested in the political conscience of these societies, usually due to a lack of interest from part of society, but also due to the lack of incentives from the State in this matter. But this is a very complex subject that I can deal with in another article.

To try to continue the reasoning of the Western disintegration and distortion of the democratic sense, I can give a practical example of Brazil, because it is closer to home. The juristocracy ended up taking over the country after Operation Lava Jato, which was nothing more than an American collusion with the Brazilian opposition to depose the Dilma Rousseff government (which does not cancel out Dilma’s mistakes, who was a terrible supposed economist and basically destroyed the country, becoming easy prey as she fell into popular disgrace). But what is this juristocracy? Simply the country’s Supreme Court overruling any take on government that the Federal Executive Branch has. And that’s just about anyone anyway.

A more emblematic case was when Jair Bolsonaro, head of the Brazilian Executive Government, tried to cheapen and cut taxes, in which he was barred by the country’s Federal Supreme Court with pious claims that did not see the welfare of the Brazilian people, but the opposite.  What is this if not a distortion of the sense of democracy with a judiciary ruling without popular vote in place of the actual president of the country? And this is seen in many parts of the globe. Jacob Zuma was arrested by order of the country’s Supreme Court as a reminder.

No wonder that what is now called lawfare has become a real weapon against legitimately elected governments.

And these phenomena happening in Brazil as in the example, or in the US, which exports this kind of practice in several parts of the world (not forgetting Pakistan which ousted Imran Khan with a motion of no confidence fomented by the US) with several groups such as Black Lives Matter, where they are nothing more than spearheads of social agitators and bankers, end up eroding the civilizational core of the country, leading to barbarism, lack of control and evil. And then you extend the reasoning now to all the countries that apply democracy as a system of government and are influenced directly or indirectly by the Northern Empire.

It is simply the total disintegration of Western society because it is not yet realized by the leaders today that the current system of government is not working, and this is causing social distortions that could be easily countered in other ways. I am not making room for dictatorships if that is what you are used to thinking, but I cannot imagine a platform of nation and homeland being put together in only 4 years. Things take much longer to happen than the terms of democracies.

We could have held on, but the thirst for war always speaks louder

It is curious to think that things could have been different, such as if Russia became a member of NATO, which would have shut up some of the mouths in Brussels and London thirsting for war, or even what I have already mentioned in an article: a document linked to international law based on multilateral coordination between the UN and other entities recognizing that Ukraine would not join NATO, respecting the Russian right to the territorial security of the Federation. If we take recent Russian history, we would understand their concerns.

In the late 1990s, Chechnya for example tried to secede from Russia as soon as the Soviet disintegration happened and Putin ascended to power, which led him to his first challenge: to reintegrate Chechnya into Russian territory. But how? Well, unfortunately, it took Chechnya going back to the stone age for that. But it has also been proven that the US used spearheads and international terrorists in some wars in the Caucasus, including in Chechnya itself, thus fostering a disintegration of Russian territory.

Putin himself has already spoken several times on this subject in speeches because he himself as director of the FSB (still KGB, just changed the name, everybody knows) had access to the documents coming from double agents which would prove that the West was using terrorists to disintegrate Russia. But it failed.

This point alone would explain the Russian fear of NATOstan as a neighbor, the most emblematic case being Ukraine, which is their gateway to Europe, basically the breadbasket of the continent. But it’s not as if the Russians didn’t give in as well, the Baltics bordering Russia are already part of NATO, and could be used as agents provocateurs against Moscow in various ways. But it was not enough. It is never enough for those who thirst for war.  And they cooked up the crisis to such a point where we got where we are today.

The US as a country supposedly allied with Ukraine (which was doing nothing more than sponsoring bio-labs for developing biological weapons in the country and laundering money through the Burisma company, which hired Hunter Biden) if they really didn’t want war, the first step to be taken was to put at least 50,000 troops in and around Kiev. They could do this, and it would cost very little compared to the financial effort currently seen. Or better: let the diplomatic arguments win and the binding anti-Ukraine document in NATO come out! It would be the most beautiful diplomatic move between countries ever seen. But things are not that sweet.

With this, they got the war, they are losing territory, part of popular opinion no longer supports them, and practically in numbers, they govern for less than 1 billion people (considering the current population of the G7). They have accelerated an integration among emerging economies, that would normally take a few years to happen. Who would have thought that not everybody likes war? That the concern of some countries is against hunger and unemployment, for example?

The integration is already happening, the train has left the station, and they will try to do what we are doing because mistakes don’t last forever. One hour you learn, even if through pain, even if it costs some genocides, even if it costs some bombed cities, even if it costs some generations, we always learn. It is not difficult to understand that you do not apply the same tactics that have already been tried when they have already been proven wrong.

Using the refrain from The Wanted:

“We’ve only just begun, hypnotized by drums
Until forever comes
You’ll find us chasing the sun
They said this day wouldn’t come, we refused to run”

The emergents have just begun and will be there chasing the sun showing that those who said the day wouldn’t come. It has come.

---

Guilherme Wilbert is a Brazilian law graduate interested in geopolitics and international law.

The Secret American Plan to Make Russia Great Again

May 24, 2022

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By Dmitry Orlov

It is generally a good idea to avoid ascribing nefarious intent to actions explained by mere stupidity. But this is a case where mere stupidity cannot possibly explain the long, steady procession of foreign policy errors spanning three decades, all of them specifically aimed at strengthening Russia. It is not possible to argue that a surplus of hubris, ignorance, greed and political opportunism and a deficit of competent foreign policy analysts can produce such a result, for that would be essentially the same as arguing that some monkeys armed with drills, mills and lathes can produce a Swiss watch. But the only alternative would be to claim that there is a network of Kremlin’s agents ensconced deep within the bowels of the American Deep State and that they are all working in concert to advance Russia’s interests while meticulously maintaining plausible deniability all the while and at all levels of the operation.

Ostensibly, the plan was to weaken and destroy Russia; but then, following the Soviet collapse, Russia was weakening and destroying itself very well all by itself, no intervention needed. What’s more, every US effort to weaken and destroy Russia has made it stronger; had there existed even a most rudimentary feedback mechanism, so vast a discrepancy between policy goals and policy results would have been detected and adjustments would have been made. Superficially, this may be explained by the nature of America’s sham-democracy, where each administration can blame its failures on mistakes made by the previous administration, but the Deep State remains in power throughout, and it would simply be forced to admit to itself that there is a problem with the plan to weaken and destroy Russia after a few cycles of this unfolding fiasco. The fact that it hasn’t detected any such problem brings us full circle, back to the suspicion that there are Putin’s agents toiling tirelessly deep within the Deep State.

But that’s pure conspiracy theory and we shouldn’t want to go anywhere near that. Suffice to say, there is at present no adequate explanation for what happened. After the Soviet collapse, very little was needed to speed along the collapse of Russia itself. But none of these steps have been taken, and the steps that were taken (with the ostensible goal of weakening and destroying Russia) have done the exact opposite. Why? Below are listed 10 of the most successful initiatives of what appear to be a US Deep State MRGA campaign. If you have an alternative explanation, I’d like to hear it.

1. If Russia were immediately accepted into the World Trade Organization (which it wanted to join) it would have been swamped with cheap imports, destroying all of Russian industry and agriculture. Russia would simply sell oil, gas, timber, diamonds and its other resources and buy whatever is needed. Instead, the US and other WTO members spent 18 years negotiating Russia’s entry into the organization. By the time it joined, in 2006, very little time remained before the financial collapse of 2008, after which time the WTO hasn’t been too much of a factor.

2. If Russia were immediately granted visa-free travel to the West (as it wanted) most working-age Russians would have readily diffused out of Russia, leaving behind a population of orphans and the elderly, much as has happened with contemporary Ukraine. After losing much of its productive population, Russia would not have posed any sort of economic or military threat. Instead, Russia was never granted visa-free travel and instead faced restrictions that have only increased over time. By now most Russians have internalized the idea that they are simply not wanted in the West and that they should seek their fortune back home.

3. After the Soviet collapse, Russia itself collapsed into a loose mosaic of regional centers. Many of them (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Urals Republic, Chechnya) entertained notions of secession. Left untouched, Russia would have devolved into a loose confederation with no ability to formulate joint foreign policy. Instead, resources and mercenaries were pumped into Chechnya, turning it into an existential threat to Moscow’s authority and forcing it to become militarily assertive. The fact that Chechen volunteers are now fighting on the Russian side in the Ukraine underscores the failure of America’s Chechnya policy.

4. If, following the Soviet collapse, NATO simply recognized that the threat it was intended to counter no longer existed and either dissolved or simply became quiescent, Russia would never have thought it necessary to rearm itself. Indeed, Russia was happily cutting up its ships and missiles for scrap metal. Instead, NATO saw it fit to bomb Yugoslavia (for a made-up humanitarian reason) and then to relentlessly expand eastward. These actions have communicated most adequately the message that it wasn’t the USSR, and Communism, that the West opposed but Russia itself. And while, by the time the 1990s rolled around, not too many Russians were eager to fight and die for the greater glory of communism, rising to the defense of Motherland is an entirely different story.

5. If Russia’s near-abroad were simply left alone, Russia would never have considered venturing outside of its already vast and underpopulated territory. But then came a provocation: acting with US sanction, Georgian forces attacked Russian peacekeepers in South Osettia during the Beijing Olympics of 2008, forcing Russia to react. The fact that Russia could demilitarize Georgia in just a few days was a major confidence boost and taught it that NATO and NATO-trained forces are soft and squishy and not much of a problem. Russian territory expanded to include South Ossetia, with Abkhazia thrown in as an added bonus, paving the way for further territorial expansion (Crimea, Donbass, Kherson… Nikolaev, Odessa…).

6. If the US left alone Syria, a close Russian ally for close to a century, Russia would not have expanded into the Mediterranean region. As it is, Syrian government invited Russia to help it turn the tide in its war against US-supported ISIS and Russia destroyed ISIS with the help of a rather small contingent of air-and-space forces at just one airbase. The action in Syria has showcased modern Russian weapons systems and has led to a 20-year backlog in weapons orders from around the world. What’s more, Russia’s allies around the world know that if the US/NATO, or their mercenaries, give them any trouble, all they have to do is whistle and Moscow will rush in with their precision bombs and neatly stack the corpses.

7. After the 2014 Kiev putsch and the re-accession of Crimea, US/Western sanctions were immensely helpful in helping jump-start a large-scale program of import replacement, rejuvenating both Russian industry and agriculture. Russia is now largely self-sufficient in food and a major food exporter. Its position as the world’s main breadbasket will be further improved by the addition of Eastern and Southern Ukrainian “black earth” regions of uniquely fertile land. The sanctions were accompanied by speculative attacks on the ruble which drove its value down from 30 to the dollar to 60 (where it stands today) making Russian products much more competitive internationally and stimulating foreign trade.

8. The endless hollow threats to block Russia from using the SWIFT interbank messaging system have prompted Russia to create its own payment system, which is now integrated with China’s. The arrest of the $300 billion Russian sovereign wealth fund that was held on deposit in Western banks, along with freezing the funds of Russian oligarchs, have taught Russians not to trust Western banks and to avoid keeping their money abroad. All of these hostile actions in the finance space have paved the way for a rather measured response that has instantly made the ruble the most valuable and stable currency on the planet, leaving the dollar and the euro vulnerable to hyperinflation.

9. The eight-year war waged by the Ukrainian army, with unquestioning US/NATO support, against the Russian civilian population in the Donbass, has produced a very specific understanding throughout Russia’s population: that the West wants to exterminate it. When the Ukrainians then declared that they want to build nuclear bombs, and when it was discovered that Pentagons bioweapons labs in the Ukraine were working on creating pathogens specifically targeting Russians, and when, finally, it became clear that it was not just the Ukrainians but all of NATO was behind it, that the Ukrainians-plus-NATO were poised to launch an all-out attack, Russia pre-empted it by launching its own Special Operation. Cynical as this may seem, the previous eight-year shelling of buildings full of old people, women and children, shown live on Russia’s nightly news but steadfastly ignored in the West, was instrumental in producing approval ratings for the Special Operation that has reached 76%, with similar ratings for Putin, his government and even many of the regional governments. Now that, Western arms shipments notwithstanding, the Ukrainian military is being whittled away at a rate that will finish it off in approximately 20 days (the calculated “Day Z”), Russia is poised to emerge as an outright victor in World War III which, just like the Cold War, which it had lost, was barely even fought. This will restore Russia’s military’s mystique of being perpetually victorious.

10. Finally, Russia should be grateful for the lavish funds provided over the years by the US and the collective West in support of free speech and freedom of the press in Russia, by which is meant pro-Western propaganda. First, it did help liberate Russia’s media space, to a point that now Russia is much more open to freedom of self-expression than any of the European countries or the US, with barely a hint of corporate censorship or cancel culture that are rampant in the West. Second, so ham-handed and overbearingly dumb was the Western propaganda onslaught that the Russians, after processing it for some years, now openly laugh at the pro-Western narrative, and opinion research agencies report Russian support for pro-Western policies only in trace amounts. The process was helped by the sheer ludicrousness of various developments in the West: cancel culture, MeToo, LGBT, child sex change operations, promotion of pedophilia and all the rest, which produced a wave of revulsion. This 180º reversal, from overwhelmingly pro-Western opinions of the early 1990s to the current situation, are a crowning achievement of the entire three-decade-long Deep State campaign to Make Russia Great Again (MRGA).

I do not wish to argue that the existence of MRGA within the US Deep State is demonstrably, provably true. But I urge you to follow Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous dictum that “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth” and let me know what you come up with.

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On Wars, Propaganda and outright Lies

May 07, 2022

Source

By Francis Lee

Here is a typical political offering from the British centre-left. As follows:

‘’Putin’s war on Ukraine has led to thousands of deaths, upended the world order, and intensified the global energy crisis. At home in Britain, it has led to an outpouring of support for Ukrainian refugees – if not for black and brown people fleeing war and persecution – and provided cover for Keir Starmer to further crack down on the Left of Labour, from socialist MPs to Young Labour.

In this extract of an interview from the latest Momentum political education bulletin, The Educator, David Wearing (whomever he is!- FL) discusses the geopolitical interests at stake, the reactions of Western states, especially the UK, and how the Left in Britain can meaningfully engage in anti-imperialist struggle today.

Momentum a centre-left political grouping within the British Labour Party: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused untold devastation and loss of life. Evidence of fresh atrocities seem to emerge almost daily. Why has Vladimir Putin’s regime launched this war of aggression, in your opinion?’’ (Red Pepper – leftist British publication.)

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Francis Lee (FL). You see the Russians are the really bad guys, or so we are told, and this is regarded as being axiomatic coming straight from the NATO propaganda handbook, the media, and the political elites in the west. But actually, the war against the Eastern Provinces in the Donbass in Eastern Ukraine started shortly after 2014 when the US organized the coup in Independence Square. Kiev was eager to march East and ‘deal with’ (to put it mildly) the two republics who subsequently were put under a siege by the Ukrainian army and death squads and 14000 of the two Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk were killed after being under the Ukie siege from 2014 to the present time. Of course, no mention was made of this in Mr. Wearing’s piece.

David Wearing holds forth as follows: There’s a standard imperialist mentality at work. (Agreed, but read Washington for Moscow – FL) Moscow evidently regards Ukraine with a strong sense of entitlement; part of its sphere of influence in the same way that the United States has historically treated Latin America as its ‘backyard’ under the so-called ‘Monroe Doctrine‘, and sought to dominate the Middle East more recently. Reasserting substantive control over Russia’s near abroad has been an overriding strategic priority for Moscow since the mid-1990s at least.

Indeed, the guiding principle across two decades of Putin’s presidency has essentially been ‘Make Russia Great Again‘. His revanchist, authoritarian nationalism is a product of the 1990s, when Moscow lost its grip on many of its former Tsarist and Soviet possessions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and when the Russian economy imploded under neoliberal shock therapy. The ugly machismo of Putin’s rule is a backlash against all of this.

FL – Actually, it was Putin who pulled Russia out of the grip of the oligarchs and free riders who had almost destroyed Russia. Moreover, this would of course be yet another eastern expansion in NATO’s relentless march whose object is and always has been to place an ever-tightening tourniquet around Russia’s neck. It is the West through the instrumentality of NATO which has pushed right up to Russia’s borders in a defiance of the deal in 1991 where NATO would not move ‘’one inch’’ closer to Russia’s borders with a flight time of 5 minutes to Moscow by hypersonic missile.

In fact, Russia offered a peace deal with a view to winding down the conflict which involved an implementation of the Minsk Accords, restoration of the Lugansk/Donetsk independent republics and neutrality for Ukraine. Initially the Ukrainian diplomatic delegation seemed interested in these proposals during the peace talks in Turkey. But as soon as they got back home to Ukraine the delegation was told in short order – almost certainly by the Americans – that none of these proposals were acceptable. So, according to the hard-liners and the Americans, that leaves only war as an option.

But according to Mr Wearing

So, the imperial logic is obvious (yes, but whose imperial logic? FL) but it hardly adds up to a justification for war. Certainly not one you can sell to the Russian public as good reason to sacrifice their sons and daughters on the battlefield. Hence the various pretexts for the invasion that Putin has offered in terms of defending the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine. We don’t need to detain ourselves with any of that. (sic! FL) Really, why not?

Wearing continues: Every imperial aggressor throughout history has claimed to be acting on some noble, virtuous principle.

FL – In actual fact the USSR as it was then constituted, was only too glad to get rid of these burdens, i.e., the Baltics, Georgia et cetera.

Aside from geopolitical motives, there’s been a palpable sense of hubris from Putin following previous military victories in Chechnya, Georgia (Georgia who firstly attacked South Ossetia killing a number of Russian Peacekeepers) and Syria (Presumably the writer thinks that a Russian victory in Syria was a defeat for democracy, when it was actually a defeat for the Takfiris).

But this war has proved a major miscalculation, and the danger now is that — like the US in Vietnam and Afghanistan – he (Putin) digs in for the long term rather than suffer the humiliation of accepting defeat. Given the sheer viciousness of the Russian campaign so far, this is not something that the people of Ukraine can afford.

Wearing: Clearly, responsibility for this heinous violence lies first and foremost with Putin and the Russian state.

(F.L., I beg your pardon, but heinous violence came from the Ukrainian military and particularly from the neo-nazi units who couldn’t wait to start shelling the Donbass and continuing to do so for 8 long years killing 14000 ethnic Russians in their homes. Moreover, by 2021 Ukie army decided to take a second bite of the cherry. One hundred thousand Ukrainian troops were about to roll over the Donbass, but Putin after all the dithering stopped them in their tracks with the Russian Regular Forces and the Don Bass Militias.

Such is the policy of the British left’s framing of the situation which is one that they don’t understand and have no wish to.)

DW: There’s been a debate within the US foreign policy establishment about the wisdom of expanding NATO going back over a quarter of a century. One side (the old conservatives and Cold War veterans) argued that expanding the alliance too far into Russia’s former sphere of influence would raise tensions between Washington and Moscow to a dangerous degree. The other side (the neo-liberals and neo-conservatives of the post-Cold War era) argued that Washington’s interests lay in opening the alliance up to any state that wanted to join. At least initially, it was the latter group that got their way.

This is a debate among imperialists about the best policy for Washington to adopt Moscow in its own imperial interests. So, it’s been a little odd to see the anti-expansionist position in that debate being portrayed in recent weeks as ‘pro-Moscow’. Take the US diplomat George Kennan, who argued in 1997 that ‘expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era’, which would ‘inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion [and] restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations’. Back in the 1940s, Kennan had been one of the key intellectual architects of Washington’s entire Cold War strategy toward the USSR. It’s a sign of the depths to which the current debate has degenerated that even the sort of analysis offered by people like him is now routinely denounced as apologia for Putin.

For myself, I can see some logic in the arguments made by these old conservatives of the US foreign policy establishment. Clearly, they are attempting to explain, rather than excuse, their imperial adversary’s response to the expansion of NATO. And clearly some of their predictions have come true.

However, as socialist anti-imperialists we have our own language and frames of reference which are much more analytically useful than some of the shoddy euphemisms of the grand strategists. For example, we should dispense with talk of Russia’s ‘security concerns’ (Oh, yes Russia’s ‘paranoia’ about ‘security concerns’ regarding NATO’s inexorable moving up to the Russian border and stationing their hypersonic assets right on the Russian doorstep with 5 minutes flight time to Moscow and St. Petersburg – FL) as a ‘great power’, and instead refer more frankly and accurately to Russia’s imperial ambitions in places like Ukraine.

FL – (BS! Russia and Putin did not harbour any imperial ambitions, nor did it want a war either with any of its ex-soviet republics, or NATO’s relentless push to its western borders. It was NATO who were belligerently encouraged for exactly that eventuality, not Russia).

The term ‘security’ is one that mostly has an obfuscators effect in political discourse. Imperialists may see control over neighbouring countries as a matter of security, even ‘defence’, but the rest of us don’t have to indulge that.

We also need to think beyond how imperial powers should best manage competition over their respective spheres of interest. A better question for us might be, how can West, Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia, be made into a common home rather than a geopolitical battleground? This is likely a question for a post-Putin world, but we should start thinking about it now. If we’re lucky enough at some point in the future to enjoy another historical moment of détente between the West and Russia, and another interlocutor in Moscow like Mikhail Gorbachev, then we should seize that moment to build a durable peace, rather than squander it a second time.

FL – (But Gorbachov was tricked by the US – this in the shape of Chief US negotiator, James Baker, and the Americans whom NATO had promised would not move ‘’one inch further to the East’’ who then reneged on the promise. The NATO military machine then predictably moved right up to the old Soviet borders. From the US-NATO viewpoint this was a shrewd move, which caught the Russians napping. Well Putin must have mused ‘fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.)

Momentum: So that’s the Western meta-narrative around the confrontation with Russia. What about the West’s approach to the Ukraine war itself?

DW: The fact that the Western powers find themselves on the right side (‘’the right side indeed’’! Along with, Svoboda, C14, Right Sector, the Azov Regiment! These are the shock-troops of NATO under US leadership) the Ukraine war reflects imperial interests and expediency not some high moral principle. They perceive a clear geopolitical advantage to be gained either from a Ukrainian victory or at least a Russian military failure. Support comes in the form of arms supplies to Ukraine and sanctions against Moscow, but a no-fly zone or some other direct intervention has thankfully been ruled out so far, due to the entirely rational fear that this would trigger World War Three.

There’s been no groundswell of opposition to this from the left, and rightly so. Ukraine has no option but to defend itself (sic!) militarily, (by marching east presumably and attempting to over-run the Don Bass and killing its own citizens therein? FL) and it has the right to do so (yes, apparently on a regular basis. FL ), and it has the right to seek the means of self-defence. (self-defence! But of course, shelling your own citizens in the Don Bass – a strange form of self-defence this!) from the only sources credibly able to provide it, namely Russia’s Western adversaries.

But given the nature of Western power we are understandably wary. We are wary of sanctions having a devastating effect on the Russian population, and without seriously hurting the regime. We are wary of any escalation into a direct NATO-Russia war, which would be utterly catastrophic.

Already in the past few weeks we’ve seen US President Biden announce huge additional spending on nuclear weapons. Experts have long warned that upgrading and renewing nuclear arsenals makes the world less, nor safer. We can expect a serious rise in military spending in the UK, and in Germany as well, where decades of foreign policy have been torn up. It’s really important that we stand by our anti-militarist principles in this moment. That doesn’t mean an absolutist form of pacifism, but it does mean an insistence that people recognise that arms races inflame rather than guard against the danger of military conflict.

Finally, in the prevailing atmosphere of machismo, we need to ensure people don’t forget the non-military, humanitarian dimension. That means demanding swift and safe paths to entry for Ukrainian refugees (as part of our wider demand for a complete change in UK border policy). It means aid for displaced Ukrainians wherever they might be. And it means any other economic measures that might help, such as cancelling Ukraine’s national debt to support its recovery whenever the war finally ends.’’

FL – Yes, I get it, a sort of ‘soft NATO’ approach?

OK, so let’s have another version. The Soviet Union was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1941. During the retreat the Red Army was pushed back almost to Moscow. Ukraine was occupied by Germany and also by indigenous Ukrainian fascist collaborators – still unfortunately with us – for most of WW2. Not only did Bandera’s (OUN-B) and Shukeyvich (UPA) fascist (yes, fascists!) collaborate with the Wehrmacht particularly in the massacre in Volhynia (1943-44) of Poles, Jews, and Russians, they were also lauded by the local population (and still are to this day) of the inhabitants of the western Ukraine centred around the cities of Lviv, Ternopol and Vinnytsia, et al. Not to be missed are the statues of Bandera lovingly adorned with flowers in the major cities west of the river Dnieper.

Around the period of 2013, ultra-nationalist groups (inveterate fascists) in the shape of Right Sector and Svoboda C14, and those lovely chaps of the Azov Regiment (1) began to emerge from the shadows and appear among the genuine moderate majority and joined in pitched battles in Kiev with the Berkut (riot Police) daily which the opposition forces finally won. This was, according to the UK’s Guardian ‘newspaper’ a victory for democracy (sic!) and peoples’ power. Well, it might have started like this, but it soon transmuted into something very different. Nobody should be in any doubt about the political complexion of these ultra-nationalist groups – who were and continue to be more than a marginalist political-military force – who went on to hold 6 portfolios in the new ‘government’ based in Kiev. Nor should anyone be in any doubt about both the overt and covert roles played by both the US and EU officials (not forgetting the ever-present Mr. Soros, who is always a fixture in these situations) and the formation of the future interim government.

Throughout this period the EU and high-ranking US officials were openly engaged in Ukraine’s internal affairs. The US Ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, were strolling around Independence Square reassuring the protestors that America stood behind them. Also basking in the political sunlight were US NGOs (such as the National Endowment for Democracy – NED – directly funded by the US Government) and (USAID). Also involved was the US Human Rights Watch (HRW) and not forgetting of course the ubiquitous Mr. Soros. Identified as GS in the leaked Open Society Foundation (OSF) documents, others involved in the Ukrainian coup in the planning, were the already named, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, along with the following: David Meale (Economic Counsellor to Pyatt, Lenny Benardo (Open Society Foundation – OSF) Yevhen Bystry (Executive Director International Renaissance Foundation – IRF) Oleksandr Sushko (Board Chair, IRF) Ivan Krastev (Chairman Centre for Liberal Studies, a Soros and US government-influenced operation in Sofia, Bulgaria) and Deff Barton (Director, US Agency for International Development AID – USAID – Ukraine). USAID is a conduit for the CIA.

Even right-wing thinkers such as George Freidman at Stratfor described these events as being ‘the most blatant coup in history.’

The new ‘government’ in Kiev was represented by a hotch-potch of oligarchs, Kolomoisky, Akhmetof, Pinchuk, Poroshenko, et al, and petty fuhrers including Pariuby, Yarosh, Biletsky, from the Western Ukraine with their violent armed Squadristi units (as in Italy’s period under Mussolini’s regime) terrorizing their opponents. The ultra-right Svoboda Party had a presence in the Ukrainian parliament (Rada). It was and still is a neo-nazi, ultra-right, anti-Semitic, Russophobic party with its base of support in the western Ukraine. The most important governmental post was handed to its fuhrer Andriy Parubiy who was appointed as Secretary of the Security and National Defence Committee, which supervised the defence ministry and the armed forces. The Parubiy appointment to such an important post should, alone, be cause for international outrage. He led the masked Right-Sector thugs who battled riot police in the Maidan in Kiev.

Like Svoboda, Right-Sector led by their own tin-pot fuhrer Dmitry Yarosh is an openly fascist, anti-semitic and anti-Russian organization. Most of the snipers and bomb-throwers in the crowds related to this group. Right Sector members had been participating in military training camps for the last 2 years or more in preparation for street activity of the kind witnessed in the Ukraine during the events in Independence Square in 2013-14. The Right Sector as can be seen by the appointment of Parubiy, is not able to control major appointments to the provisional government but he has succeeded in achieving his long-term goal of legalizing discrimination against Russians. What the Anglo-American left fail to understand – quite deliberately in my view – is the notion that the Ukrainian right-wing extremists are a marginal force in Ukraine. How much evidence do they need exactly? In fact, the politics of the western Ukraine is dominated by the ultras of the right, and every major city has statues of Bandera lovingly cared for and adorned with flower bouquets around his feet.

This discrimination took the forms of mass murder of the 45 people who passed out leaflets in the southern Black Sea port of Odessa when pro-Yanukovich supporters were attacked by fascist mobs and chased into a nearby building, a trade union HQ. The building was then set on fire and its exits blocked, the unfortunate people trapped inside were either burnt to death or, jumped out of the windows only to be clubbed to death when they landed. The practices of the political heirs of Bandera had apparently not been forgotten by the present generation. There is a video of the incident, but frankly, it was so horrific that I could only watch it once. (See more recently the whole murderous episode in the American publication Consortium News 2022). These barbarians were described by Luke Harding a ‘journalist’ of the Guardian as being ‘’an eccentric group of people with unpleasant right-wing views.’’ Yes, they were really nice chaps who got a little carried away!

One week later with the open support of Washington and its European allies, the regime installed by Washington and Berlin in February’s fascist-led putsch then began extending its reign of terror against all popular resistance in Ukraine. That was the significance of the events in the major eastern Ukrainian sea-port city of Mariupol less than a week after the Odessa outrage. (Mariupol has also come into the recent news for a second time around,)

After tanks, armoured personnel carriers and heavily armed troops were unleashed on unarmed civilians in the city, the Kiev regime claimed to have killed some 20 people. The Obama administration immediately blamed the violent repression on “pro-Russian separatists.’’

One week later Poroshenko, ex-Finance Minister in Yanukovich’s government, was elected as President on 29 May and duly announced that “My first presidential trip will be to Donbass where armed pro-Russian rebels had declared the separatist Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and control a large part of the region.’’ This was the beginning of the Anti-Terrorist Operation the ATO. However, things didn’t quite work out as planned. After 2 heavy defeats at Iloviask and Debaltsevo the Ukie army was stopped in its tracks and the situation has remained static to roughly this day.

Until that is things changed. Some 8 years later the Ukie army started doing what comes naturally to them: namely to start shelling the Donbass again. It should be understood that the shelling had started in 2014 immediately after the Kiev coup. During the whole period some 14000 hapless citizens of the Don Bass were killed. Moreover, a large Ukie army of some 100,000 were beginning to mass outside of the Don Bass and were preparing their move.

There was no way that Putin was going to allow this. Not only would it mean mass murder of the Don Bass, but it would also put Ukraine (qua western proxy) right on Russia’s border with NATO hypersonic missiles 5 minutes flying time from Moscow. That settled it – Putin had had enough. The Russian Army moved in. It was left with no alternative.

No great power can allow a peer competitor to mass on its borders by any other great power. The US/NATO was precisely doing this. As Putin pointed out, the flying time for hypersonic missiles from the Russian border to Moscow was 5 minutes. See the American Realist theorist John Mearsheimer in this respect.

Yet, all we get from the legacy left is the incessant virtue signalling and anti-Russian rhetoric. In truth Putin didn’t want this war, but there was pressure building up not only from the US neo-cons but also internally in Russia for a more militant approach in both the Parliament and with the Russian public. Any disinterested account of Putin’s turned on the initial attack of NATO and its proxies and Russia’s counterattack. The neo-cons should have heeded Obama’s warning that Russia had an ‘escalation dominance’ and that the US would be advised to tread carefully on Russia’s doorstep.

Russia is slowly but inexorably winning the battlefield in what has been a total defeat for the regime in Kiev, and more importantly for the US-NATO bloc. The tectonic geopolitical plates seem to be moving.

Great footage of Chechen soldiers going to defend Russia against the Ukronazis

March 21, 2022

Neo-Nazi Ukrainians greasing bullets with pig fat to shoot Muslim Chechens

March 1, 2022

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen Net 

A video published by the Ukrainian National Guard depicts systemic bigotry in Ukraine.

Video: Neo-Nazi greasing bullets with pig fat to shoot Muslim Chechens

The National Guard of Ukraine’s Twitter account released a video, boasting about Azov fighters greasing their bullets with lard to be used against Muslim Chechens on the Russian side. 

The video comes as a direct threat to Muslims who hold the Islamic beliefs that pig is prohibited for their consumption, and that it’s impure substance. 

Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs👊

Бійці Азова Нацгвардії змастили кулі салом проти кадировських орків👊

Підписуйтесь на наш телеграм канал https://t.co/SBQltMr4bM pic.twitter.com/A1ci7tZL8r

— НГУ (@ng_ukraine) February 27, 2022

The tweet captions, “Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs,” referring to Ramzan Kadyrov, who is the president of the Chechen republic.  

Chechnya is a Russian republic located north of Georgia with the Chechen forces in charge of defending the Muslim-majority republic. 

Kadyrov previously announced his readiness to send fighters to the current conflict in Ukraine in support of Russia. A number of sources have claimed that Chechen forces have marched towards Kiev after being deployed to Ukraine.

Read more: US remarks on human rights violations in Chechnya part of info war: Russia

However, they were met with fierce confrontation from Ukrainian forces, and many died, according to general Magomed Tushayev. 

Twitter did not remove the video, but rather resorted to flagging it: It was written that the video violates standards and promotes hateful content, but it may be within the interest of the public to view it, stirring public confusion.

“At present, we limit exceptions to one critical type of public-interest content—Tweets from elected and government officials—given the significant public interest in knowing and being able to discuss their actions and statements,” the rules state.

The Azov battalion: openly neo-Nazi, unlimited international support 

The Azov battalion is a part of the Ukrainian National Guard – a wing of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. 

The battalion flaunts is Nazism very openly, and is even notoriously known for a video in which they crucified a soldier, tortured him, and burnt him alive. 

The United States and Canada over the years have aided the neo-Nazi units with weapons and training, strengthening their presence in Ukraine. 

Read more: CIA manages training program for Ukrainian paramilitaries: reports

Earlier today, the Russian envoy to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said that Zelensky has shown his inability to withstand radicals in Kiev, emphasizing while adding that the real power in Ukraine belongs to extremists and Nazis, who have their own agenda. 

The Russian representative stressed that Zelensky has demonstrated that he is weak, notably as he does not display the political will and strength to contain the extremists who constitute the main political force in Ukraine today. 

Twelve thousand Chechens ready to deploy to Ukraine – Kadyrov

25 Feb, 2022

Chechen fighters support Moscow’s intervention in the eastern European nation, the region’s chief claims

Thousands of men from Chechnya are willing to offer assistance to Russia’s armed forces, the southern republic’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has pledged, as Moscow’s military conducted the second day of its attack on Ukraine.

On Friday, 12,000 local volunteers amassed on the central square of the regional capital, Grozny. Kadyrov informed the publication ‘Chechnya Sevodnya’ of their rally, which was organized in order to show their support for the Kremlin and their readiness to aid its objectives.

“These are volunteers who are ready to leave for any special operation at any time in order to secure our state and our people,” Kadyrov told the outlet, adding that no troops would be deployed until the “Supreme Commander in Chief” Putin gave the go-ahead.

According to the Chechen minister of national policy, Akhmed Dudayev, the aim of the congregation was to demonstrate how prepared the troops were to follow orders and defend their homeland.

https://t.me/rtnews/21099?embed=1

“It was a check of the personnel”, Dudayev clarified to RBK, “A check of the readiness of the personnel to carry out any orders of the supreme commander-in-chief, the country’s president, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”

In a speech he gave to the assembled servicemen in central Grozny, Kadyrov demanded that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky apologize to Putin.

“Taking this opportunity, I want to give advice to the current President Zelensky so that he calls our President, Supreme Commander Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, and apologizes for not doing so sooner. Do it in order to save Ukraine. Ask for forgiveness and agree to all the conditions that Russia puts forward. This will be the most correct and patriotic step for him,” the leader declared.

Putin tells Ukrainian military to ‘take power into their hands’

Moscow instigated a “special military operation” in Ukraine in the early hours of Thursday morning, with the intent to demilitarize and “de-nazify” the country, after alleging that Kiev’s government had been responsible for eight years of genocide in the country’s war-torn Donbass region.

As the second day of the offensive draws to a close, much of Ukraine’s military has been crippled, with airports, communication centers, defense infrastructure, and military bases damaged in a series of Russian air strikes.

On Friday, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Kiev had “disappeared” after choosing Warsaw as a place to hold negotiations with Moscow.

“Zelensky said he was ready to discuss Ukraine’s neutral status. Initially, Putin said that the purpose of the operation was to help the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, including through the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. And this, in fact, is an integral component of neutral status,” Peskov explained.

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Russian operation in the Ukraine – end of day 2

February 25, 2022

Today was only day two of the Russian military operation.  And yet, what a day it was!!!

First, a quick update on the progress of Russian forces.  Here is a bulletpoint summary for today:

• Kherson: liberated
• Nikolaev: fighting taking pace in outskirts
• Konotop: taken by Russians
• Chernigov: blocked by all sides by Russian forces
• Melitopol: surrounded
• Mariupol: is under attack, street fighting
• Severodonetsk: under attack
• Kharkov: very heavy mopping up operation
• Suma: mopping up operations
• Kiev: blocked from the West and under attack, the authorities are distributing weapons
• Gostomel airport has been captured by Russian forces
• Zaporozhie: Russian forces expected there tomorrow
• A land corridor from Crimea to Russia should be opened by tomorrow.
• Odessa: big question mark – so far, not Russian attacks reported (that I know of!)

Ukie Tochka-U intercepted by LDNR air defenses

Now about Donetsk and Lugansk:

• Both cities are still under fire, and that goes to show that the advance of the LDNR forces has been slow, which is hardly surprising considering that the Ukronazis had 7 years to prepare their defenses.  Still, things ARE getting better.  Not only that, but the LDNR air defenses shot down a Ukie Tochka-U missile aimed at Donetsk.  So it sure looks like the long awaited A2/AA “protective cupola” is being extended over the LDNR.
• That being said, the LDNR forces did break through in at least two directions today, which means that the life left for the Ukie artillery shelling the LDNR will soon come to an end.

But that does not really tell the full story.  So I will try to clarify things a little.

A typical battalion has about 400-600 men, depending on the type.  Let’s also assume that that battalion has 3-4 companies with APCs, a mortar battery, an air defense platoon, an automatic grenade launcher platoon, a signal platoon, supply platoon, and a few smaller more specialized subunits.  If that battalion loses its APCs it has basically lost its most important source of firepower.  If its communications are down (destroyed or jammed), then that battalion cannot operate as part of a bigger force and if its supply routes are cut, then its ability to operate (more or fire) will rapidly dwindle down.  So, on paper this battalion will remain combat capable, but in reality it will have broken up and cannot be considered a truly combat capable battalion anymore.

So, to destroy/incapacitate a battalion only a few precision strikes are needed.  Such strikes though, will leave most of the soldiers alive and quite capable of resistance, but not as a battalion anymore, but more like a typical infantry company or even squads armed with small arms, machine guns, PRG, mines, etc..  They cannot maneuver very much, but they can conduct small hit and run operations against the enemy force.  Which means that specialized infantry/police forces must now be send to find these small forces and deal with them in potentially bloody mopping up operations.

Of course, rather than a few precision strikes, it is much more effective to strike the entire battalion with, say, MLRS strikes which will not only destroy most of the hardware, but which will kill most of the soldiers, especially if they did not prepare and seek cover.  But that means 400-500 dead in one single strike.  That is if this battalion is somewhere in the steppe.  But if it is in downtown Mariupol such a strike will inevitably result in even more scores of dead civilians, especially since the Ukies are very careful to always position their artillery near or even on top of buildings.

Does Russia want that?

Not if there is ANY other option left.

Please keep in mind that Russia has the reconnaissance-fire complexes needed obliterate an entire battalion anywhere in the eastern Ukraine in one single salvo.  They have deliberately NOT done so today (with one possible exception during the very heavy battle for the Gostomel airport, which was taken by Russian special forces and is now secured as a safe bridgehead for Russian Military-Transport aviation right next to Kiev).

Something similar can be seen in urban offensive operations.  It is one thing to get to a city or town’s outskirts, and quite another to penetrate inside the city or town.  If the city is lightly defended by small arms fire, that is one thing, but if the city is well defended, in specially engineered defensive circles, with minefield, IEDs, very strong building used as command posts and if the city’s houses and basements have been prepared by combat engineers, then it is much harder to take.  Again, one option is to send it dedicated urban combat groups while the other is flatten any building which is used by the defenders as a fortress.

The Russian forces have the means to flatten any building anywhere in the Ukraine, including by cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, MLRS with cluster or fuel-air munition or by using howitzers, heavy mortars and even the TOS-1/TOS-1A heavy flamethrower multi-barrel rocket launch systems.

But, again, that can only be done at a major cost in human lives.  Russians won’t hesitate to obliterate some Nazi deathsquads, but to massacre hundreds of regular Ukrainians, irrespective of their personal views, is only and truly a last resort option.

There is a lot of evidence that the Russian forces have moved into the outskirts of many Ukrainian towns, including Kiev, Mariupol and others.  Here is how Russian military practice works:

• First, approach and try to block or surrender the city
• Second, suppress the main enemy firing positions
• Third, make sure that the city is truly blocked (except for a few special corridors, see below)
• Fourth, hold your position and reconnoiter the outermost enemy lines (by fire when appropriate)
• Fifth, send in special reconnaissance groups inside the city to observe and coordinate attacks
• Sixth, once the city is surrounded/blocked and once you get a pretty decent picture of what is inside you take the next decisions which might include any of the following: open corridors for civilians to flee and for military personnel to surrender and cross over, determine the main axes of attack and begin slowly grinding down the opposition with heavy firepower (artillery, air, missiles).
• Seventh, once the city’s defenses have been sufficiently disorganized, begin a house to house mopping up operation by specialized forces.

Before I go further, I want to remind you that during WWII the Soviet Military freed a whopping 1’200 (one thousand two hundred!) cities from the Nazi forces.  Russians know how to do this better than anybody else.

Furthermore, during both Chechen wars, the Russians always managed to take Grozny, which was extremely heavily fortified and defended by some of the toughest fighters on the planet in spite of the fact that at that time the Russian army was it its lowest and badly disorganized, especially during the first Chechen war!  But even in the first Chechen, the Russian did seize Grozny, twice, admittedly a huge cost (on both sides), but they did.

That was almost three decades ago.

Speaking of the Chechen war, in the first one the Russian military lost a big part of an entire brigade which had quickly entered the city, moved into the city center only to find itself surrounded and cut off, with terrible communications, quasi-non existing reconnaissance capabilities.  That debacle left a very painful memory in the Russian collective memory and if somebody was expecting Russian APCs to reach the Mariupol or Kharkov at full speed with flags and screams of “hurrah!” – they don’t understand what is taking place: the (truly criminal) mistake made by Eltin’s generals during that first Chechen war will never be repeated by modern Russian commanders.

Any defeat is always a terrible tragedy, the only and best thing anybody can do after a defeat is to understand why and how it happened, and never repeat such a (criminal) mistake again.

That is the true reason why today Russians stopped on the outskirts of so many cities.

The bottom line is this.  These are things which the Russians are trying to achieve

• Destroy the Ukie armed forces but kill the absolute minimum number of Ukrainian soldiers (real Nazi will probably be destroyed no questions asked).  Why?  Because these surviving Ukrainian soldiers and officers are the ones who will play the main role in finally cleaning the Ukraine from the Nazi scum.
• Get to the outskirts of as many major Ukrainian cities and gradually begin the steps I outlined above.
• Convince civilians to flee and convince Ukrainian solders to lay down arms
• Delay any Russian penetration inside the cities until the moment is “just right” (not too early, not too late)

Why?

Because Russia has ZERO intention of occupying or, even less so, rebuild or police the Ukraine, that’s why.  The LDNR (in its legal borders) is as far as the Russians will go (with only a few possible exceptions).

The Kremlin decided that the goal of the operation was to 1) disarm and 2) to denazify the Ukraine.  As soon as these goals are reached, the Russian want to get the hell out of the Ukraine and back into the LDNR and let the Ukrainians fight their own anti-Nazi civil war.  That means that:

• The Russians now must identify reasonable Ukrainian commanders and/or politicians to negotiate with
• That Russia needs to offer the leftover Ukrainian ground forces the same deal which the Ukrainian forces which were tasked with the control of the Chernobyl nuclear planet were given today by the Russian forces: let’s secure this facility together and keep it secure together, with no combats of any kind.   The Ukrainians gladly accepted, by the way, and now they are jointly patrolling area.
• The Russian might also try something which worked well in Chechnia: tell the local town/city authorities that if they guarantee that not a single bullet will be fire from that town/city not a single Russian bullet will fly back and not a single Russian solider will enter the city, unless accompanied by locals and in order to ascertain the reality of the situation.  But if a city is declared “open and peaceful” and then is used to attack Russian forces, it will be simply flattened with artillery.  I call that the “Shamanov ultimatum” and, after a few false starts (and subsequently flattened towns) it worked very well.

The crucial factor is this: during the two Chechen wars or during 08.08.08 the Russians never saw the local people as their enemy and, if anything, they were hoping that the locals would start their own “housecleaning operation” which was a bad joke in the first Chechen war, but worked very well in the second Chechen war, and failed again during 08.08.08.

In military/combat terms the Ukies are much more similar to the Georgians than to the Chechens, so there is a good chance Russia might have to leave unconditionally and let the locals slug it at between each other for as much as they want (which is what Russia did in 08.08.08 even though Russia Airborne units were at the outskirts of Tbilissi).

Which brings me to THE QUESTION for tomorrow: how will the Ukrainian soldiers and civilians behave?

Right now, Ukrainian losses have been minimal (considering the undeniable fact that this is a fullscale strategic offensive), the Russian forces have reached their positions on the outskirts of many towns and tomorrow or the day after will be “decision time”.

I hope and pray that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers find a common language in as many locations as possible.  Those who will chose a heroic stance (hardcore Nazis mostly) will be offered the possibility to die for their ideas.

In that context, “Ze” released a video in which he offered to negotiate directly and unconditionally, even about neutrality and any other topic.  The Russian reply was simple and to the point:

• Russia is immediately ready to start negotiations after the Armed Forces of Ukraine lay down their arms.
• The Ukraine must be demilitarized and declared neutral.
• The Ukraine must be denazified.
• Russia will no longer allow the Nazis to rule in Ukraine.  Ever.

After that reply, “Ze” and his aides stopped communicating.

I personally doubt that he has any control over anything.  And the fact that a huge amount of weapons has been distributed to whomever wanted one today in Kiev shows that “Ze”‘s handlers have given him the order to make the biggest possible mess and bloodbath before he is evacuated.

This is very sad, and utterly immoral, but there is nothing Russia can do about that: the Ukraine will be flooded by well armed criminals gangs and Nazi insurgents for years to come.

Putin today made a speech in which he suggested that Russia’s beef was only with the Nazis and their deathsquads but that Russia would seek to cooperate with the Ukrainian armed forces (well, what’s left of them, really) should they overthrow the Nazis.  See his full message here.

So, today was “we get to our staging positions” day.

So what did not happen (yet)?

• The operational envelopment of the Ukrainian forces along the LOC with the LDNR forces has not happened yet, there is still a corridor by which these forces can withdraw.  The Russian could have shut it down already “by maneuver by fire” but, apparently, they want to keep it open for a little longer.
• The Russian Black Sea fleet has not engaged in any major combat activities (that I know off, so take that with a grain of salt).

Will that happen tomorrow?  Maybe, it all really depends on whether the regular Ukrainian units will agree to surrender or whether they will fight to their last solider.  It also depends on how the Ukrainian civilians will react at the sight of approaching Russian forces.

So what to look for tomorrow?

• A further penetration of Russian forces deeper inside Ukie territory, with cities bypassed.
• The gradual penetration of Russian forces into blocked/surrounded cities
• The intervention of the Black Sea Fleet in combat operations (with maybe Odessa as a strategic target, not necessarily to take, but at least to threaten and weaken).
• A western false flag (some “Russian atrocity” no doubt)

One more thing:

Western PSYOPs are in “max attack mode” and they are being helped by Russian 5th columnist websites.  For example, I was trying to find a halfway decent map of the combat operations today, and ALL the Russian websites which offered such maps were hardcore 5th element.  Okay, I get it – 5th columnists don’t need any real facts to make their maps, while the real patriots are afraid of both getting it wrong and leaking info.  Still, I remember during the first two wars in the Donbass, there were some pretty decent maps available out there.

Today I see such zero.  If anybody can recommend semi-decent military maps of the combat operations I would be most grateful.

The fact that the Russian 5th column is allowed to continue to operate the way it does really frustrates me.  Could the Kremlin not tell them to “zip it” at least during active combat operations?

I did not even bother checking the output of the 6th column today, I fully expect it to be indistinguishable from the output of the 5th, and so I have no interest in it.

What is certain are two things: the joint efforts 5th and 6th column efforts have had some success, especially in locations where Putin his hated and pro-western views more common than in most of Russia.  The best poll I have seen says “Three-quarters of the respondents rather support the decision of the President of Russia to recognize the independent Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (73%), rather do not support – 16%, and every tenth Russian found it difficult to answer (11%). The majority of Russians – 78% – expressed support for the President’s decision to sign an agreement on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance between Russia and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Rather, 14% of respondents do not support this decision“.  Putin personal rating is at 67,2%. 

My guesstimate that no more than  5% of Russian support the 5th column and not more than 15% support the 6th column. Toss in another 5-10% which is afraid and on the fence. This is only a guess following my readings of the Russian social media, not a precise figure or even one based on serious research!

Next, the main thesis of US PSYOPs today was “the Russian movement is very slow, much slower than expected” hinting at some formidable Ukrainian defense operations.  I hope that while I did not post any maps today, the above will tell you all you need to know to identify this thesis for what it is: western information operations, nothing more.  The problem is that there is no “smartphone confirmation” of any of that, and by tomorrow I expect the main western PSYOPs thesis to change from “no/slow advance” to “Russian atrocities” (the smartphone coverage for that will, of course, be provided by the western press corps).

So, in conclusion, and once more – the “fog of war” is real, and to read through it takes both time and experience.  By tomorrow, I only expect this “fog of war” (powerfully augmented by PSYOPs) to drown us all in all sorts of nonsense, rumors and wild claims.  Again, please don’t post panicked questions such as “is it true that the Ukrainian forces are already on the Red Square in Moscow” or something equally insipid.

Two quick ones just in, then I need to crash (sorry, I am exhausted).

The US decided to impose personal sanctions personally on Putin (and others) which will result in a full termination of any diplomatic relations (as Russians warned the US many times).  Note: such sanctions are entirely symbolic but maximally offensive, so a full break with Russia is what the US wants.

Twelve thousand Chechens will be sent to the LDNR if needed,  so promised Ramzan Kadyrov, the President of Chechnia.  Actually, I think that this is a very good idea, like in Syria, the Chechens should get involved in policing and public security operations.  FYI – when the “toughest” and “NATO trained and equipped” Georgian brigade heard that the Chechen battalion Vostok was approaching, they all ran abandoning all their fancy (and secret) equipment.  Russia then organized exhibits of all that NATO kit.

Today, the LDNR authorities report the seizure of large Ukie weapons depots including the famous Javelins and NLAWs.  This is all very good news.

I am done for tonight barring some huge event.

I hope to “see you” all tomorrow.

And, again, thanks for all the help (see ADDENDUM in yesterday’s post if you have not yet)!!

You are simply the best 🙂

Andrei

PS: I don’t have the energy to proofread what I wrote, sorry.  I have to prioritize info over form.

Translation of Ramzan Kadyrov’s reaction to Biden’s UNGA lecturing

September 23, 2021

This is a translation of Ramzan Kadyrov’s reaction on this telegram channel to this clip of Biden’s lecturing in his speech to the General Assembly of the UN.Video Player

The leader of the most problematic, aggressive country in the world, embittered by all Muslim states and plowing the Arab world with aerial bombs, Biden, who shamefully returned troops from Afghanistan, all of a sudden began to mention the Chechen Republic.
We have not yet recovered from a number of his absurd statements and actions as President of the United States, and he is already making us happy with his new strange and contentious statements.
Biden made such an absurd statement, in response to which I can only invite him to our republic so that he can see with his own eyes that there are no roosters in the Chechen Republic, and there is not even such a word. Instead of that, we have chicken husbands

—

Thank you!
—
Andrei (The Saker)

Erdogan Kills 3 More Turkish Troops in Afrin, in Northwest of Syria

 ARABI SOURI JUNE 6, 2021

The latest victims among NATO’s second-largest army in Erdogan’s criminal war against the Syrian people were caused by an attack carried out against their illegal outpost in the countryside of Afrin, Erdogan’s ministry of war confirmed the attack in a statement yesterday.

In response to the attack, Erdogan’s occupation forces shelled indiscriminately with heavy artillery bombing the villages of Burj Al-Qass, Maraanaz, and Soughaniyeh in the northern Aleppo countryside, Erdogan’s propaganda claimed they attacked posts of the PKK terrorists in those areas, these allegations are common by Erdogan’s propagandists whenever they commit war crimes.

Erdogan’s forces invaded multiple towns and cities in northern Syria taking advantage of Syria’s Armed forces and their allies fighting US-sponsored ISIS and other terrorist groups in over 40 fronts across the country and repelling Israel’s continuous bombings. The Turkish madman Erdogan sent thousands of Turkish Army’s soldiers as cannon fodders to protect the tens of thousands of terrorists of Al Qaeda, Uighurs, Afghanis, Chechen, and a host of other terrorist groups tasked to Israelize large areas of northern Syria within Erdogan’s larger dream to revive the most hated Ottoman sultanate.

NATO’s armies embedded with Al Qaeda and ISIS in northern Syria are a familiar scene, claims that the NATO coalition is fighting ISIS in Syria is meant for the consumption of ignorant citizens of NATO member states footing the bill from their hard-earned tax money for NATO’s illegal and criminal operations in Syria.

Despite continuous condemnations and calls to end the illegal incursion of the Turkish army and their sponsored terrorists to northern Syria, the Turkish madman continues to beef up his soldiers under claims he’s helping the Syrian people by replacing the owners of the land with his imported terrorists and their families. The Turkish army’s cannon fodders lost already hundreds of personnel killed and maimed in his anti-Islamic adventure.

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Biden’s accounts with Russia. What will Erdogan do? حسابات بايدن مع روسيا.. ماذا سيفعل إردوغان؟

**English Machine translation Please scroll down for the Arabic original version **

Biden’s accounts with Russia. What will Erdogan do?

Biden’s accounts with Russia. What will Erdogan do?

Husni Mahali 

Al-Mayadeen Net

1 March

Georgia is gaining additional importance in Washington’s calculations, and soon President Biden, because it challenges Russia’s nine autonomous republics — most of whose population is Muslim — including Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Since joining NATO in the early 1950s, Ankara has played a key role in opposing the Western camp, led by America, to the Soviet Union, which was then adjacent to Turkey through Georgia and Armenia in the south. Through dozens of Atlantic and U.S. bases in its territory (12 of which remain), Turkey was also an advanced outpost to defend Western interests and prevent the Communist Soviet Union from expanding south toward the Arab and Muslim world.

The fall of the Soviet Union after the Afghan war and the resulting birth of The Islamic Republics of Turkish origin gave Ankara more power in regional and international calculations, especially after the late President Turgut Ozal’s talks on “the unity of the Turkish nation, from the Adriatic Sea (Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia) to the China Dam, through Bulgaria and Greece, where Muslim minorities of Turkish origin are.

Ozal’s words were welcomed and encouraged by Washington, the traditional enemy of the Soviet Union, and then Russia, which the West wanted to surround from its southern flank, where the Islamic republics, and from the West, where the countries that nato embraced in 2004, namely Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and southern Bulgaria and Romania, which overlook the Black Sea, which Turkey controls, control its only Bosphorus Strait.

This came at a time when Ukraine and Georgia paid dearly for their adventures during their velvet revolutions in which Western institutions played a major role, with Abkhazia and South Ossetia declaring independence with the support of Moscow, and separated from Georgia, while the civil war in Ukraine was a reason for the partition of the country, after the citizens of the eastern regions voted for secession, prompting Russia to “annex” Crimea in 2014.

As was the case in the 1950s and beyond, Ankara has played, and continues to play, some role in all of these developments that President Erdogan wanted to help him to support his projects and plans, which appear to have been influenced by Ozal’s slogans, and Ankara has had, and continues to be, directly and indirectly linked to the developments of its neighbor Georgia, whose tens of thousands of its citizens work in Turkey.

Georgia is gaining additional importance in washington’s calculations, and soon President Biden, because it challenges russia’s nine self-governing republics — mostof whose population is Muslim — including Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Thousands of citizens of these and other Central Asian republics have joined Al-Nusra and ISIS, while Washington wants to help it in the future in its plans to tighten the blockade on Russia, and the factions of “Afghan jihadists” helped America achieve its first goal, which is to overthrow and tear the Soviet Union, according to the green belt theory, it became clear that Washington is planning to return to this belt, and wants Turkey to play a key role in activating it, but after agreeing with Erdogan on a comprehensive deal to achieve both sides the biggest direct and indirect gains, which Presidents Biden and Erdogan are preparing on the eve of the phone call between the two parties, which seem to have been delayed by the many topics that will be in front of them, difficult and intertwined, and they need each other.

In exchange for the financial and political support of Erdogan, which seems to be in dire need, President Biden wants Turkey to go back to the 1950s and prove its absolute loyalty to Washington and NATO, which is clearly preparing for a new phase of psychological, economic and political war against Russia, this time through its back gardens to the south and west, which means that it needs to support President Erdogan because of his ties and role in the Central Asian Islamic Republics (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan), as in the Caucasus, where Azerbaijan is linked to Azerbaijan. Georgia has privileged relations, and Washington seeks to annex it to NATO, along with Ukraine.

The events in Armenia at this time are of added importance, having become a direct arena for U.S. and French intervention against the traditional Russian role. Ankara is watching all these interventions closely, firstly because Armenia is a neighboring country, and secondly because of information about the possibility that President Biden will recognize the Armenian genocide of the Ottoman era during World War I, without neglecting Washington’s privileged relationship between Ankara and Kiev, and at the expense of The Russian plans in Ukraine, Erdogan has repeatedly rejected Putin’s decision to “annex” Crimea to Russia, while information speaks of very broad cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine in all fields, especially military industries, including drones, tanks and missiles, with significant Turkish support for the Muslim minority in Crimea.

Ankara has also succeeded in establishing privileged relations with most of the former Soviet Republics and Eastern European countries that have bad memories with Moscow, which President Biden may need in his future calculations to tighten the blockade on Russia within its borders or elsewhere, particularly Latin America, where Erdogan has succeeded in establishing privileged relations with its most prominent head of state, Nicolas Maduro, despite all the personal, ideological and political contradictions between them.

President Biden may need Turkish support for his plans and projects in the Middle East, particularly in Syria, which has turned into a front alcove to defend Russian interests in the region, and across it in many regional and international arenas in which Washington, some Western capitals, and sometimes Ankara, are competing, despite the contradiction of interests among all of these capitals.

In all cases, it seems clear that we will not wait long to see what Biden will ask of Erdogan, and how the latter will respond to these demands, the most important of which is undoubtedly a return to Turkey’s nationalist, religious and historical behavior against Russia. For the past five years, after Erdogan’s apology following the downing of the Russian plane, President Putin has sought to block this possibility through a combination of interlocking economic, political and military relations with Ankara and its implications for coordination, cooperation and joint action in Syria.

With the information that president Biden expects to clear all his accounts with Ankara, whether negative or positive, President Erdogan finds himself in a situation that is never enviable, having become clear that his options are limited, either continue the current situation in the relationship with Moscow and Washington, which Biden will not accept, or continue his cooperation with Russia and its allies, which is completely impossible.

In this case, in his very difficult situation internally, he has no choice but to agree with President Biden on the axes of the next phase, and to minimize the losses in his relations with Russia that he does not want to repeat, as Biden, who knows he has a lot of serious papers against him personally and officially, wishes.

The most important question remains: Will Biden put these papers on the table and ask for them to be resolved, or will he ask Erdogan to use his own papers in Russia’s backyards, in exchange for absolute support in the gardens of others!?

حسابات بايدن مع روسيا.. ماذا سيفعل إردوغان؟

تكتسب جورجيا أهمية إضافية في حسابات واشنطن، وقريباً الرئيس بايدن، لأنها تحدّ جمهوريات الحكم الذاتي الروسية – معظم سكّانها مسلمون – وعددها تسعة، ومنها الشيشان وأنغوشيا وداغستان.

حسابات بايدن مع روسيا.. ماذا سيفعل إردوغان؟

أدَّت أنقرة منذ انضمامها إلى الحلف الأطلسي في بداية الخمسينيات من القرن الماضي دوراً أساسياً في معاداة المعسكر الغربي، بزعامة أميركا، للاتحاد السوفياتي، الذي كان آنذاك مجاوراً لتركيا من خلال جورجيا وأرمينيا في الجنوب. كما كانت تركيا، من خلال عشرات القواعد الأطلسية والأميركية الموجودة في أراضيها (ما زال هناك 12 قاعدة منها)، مخفراً متقدماً للدفاع عن المصالح الغربية ومنع الاتحاد السوفياتي الشيوعي من التمدد جنوباً باتجاه العالم العربي والإسلامي.

وجاء سقوط الاتحاد السّوفياتيّ بعد الحرب الأفغانيّة وما نتج منه من ولادة الجمهوريات الإسلاميّة ذات الأصل التركي، ليمنح أنقرة المزيد من عناصر القوة في الحسابات الإقليمية والدولية، وخصوصاً بعد أحاديث الرئيس الراحل تورغوت أوزال عن “وحدة الأمة التركية، من البحر الأدرياتيكي (البوسنة وكوسوفو ومقدونيا) إلى سد الصين الحصين، مروراً ببلغاريا واليونان، حيث الأقليات المسلمة ذات الأصل التركي.

وقد حظيت مقولات أوزال بترحيب وتشجيع من واشنطن؛ العدو التقليدي للاتحاد السوفياتي، ومن بعده روسيا، التي أراد الغرب أن يحاصرها من خاصرتها الجنوبية، حيث الجمهوريات الإسلامية، ومن الغرب، حيث الدول التي احتضنها الحلف الأطلسي في العام 2004، وهي أستونيا ولاتفيا وليتوانيا، وجنوبا بلغاريا ورومانيا اللتين تطلان على البحر الأسود، الذي تسيطر تركيا على مضيقه الوحيد البوسفور.

أتى ذلك في الوقت الذي دفعت أوكرانيا وجورجيا ثمن مغامراتهما غالياً خلال ثوراتهما المخملية التي أدت فيها مؤسسات غربية دوراً رئيسياً، فقد أعلنت أبخازيا وأوسيتيا الجنوبية استقلالهما بدعم من موسكو، وانفصلتا عن جورجيا، فيما كانت الحرب الأهلية في أوكرانيا سبباً لتقسيم البلاد، بعد أن صوّت مواطنو المناطق الشرقية من أجل الانفصال، ودفع ذلك روسيا إلى “ضم” شبه جزيرة القرم إليها في العام 2014.

وكما كان الوضع في الخمسينيات وما بعدها، فقد أدت أنقرة، وما تزال، دوراً ما في مجمل هذه التطورات التي أراد لها الرئيس إردوغان أن تساعده لدعم مشاريعه ومخططاته التي يبدو أنها تأثرت بالشعارات التي رفعها أوزال، فقد كان لأنقرة، وما يزال، علاقة مباشرة وغير مباشرة بمجمل تطورات جارتها جورجيا، التي يعمل عشرات الآلاف من مواطنيها في تركيا.

وتكتسب جورجيا أهمية إضافية في حسابات واشنطن، وقريباً الرئيس بايدن، لأنها تحدّ جمهوريات الحكم الذاتي الروسية – معظم سكّانها مسلمون – وعددها تسعة، ومنها الشيشان وأنغوشيا وداغستان. 

وقد انضمّ الآلاف من مواطني هذه الجمهوريات وغيرها في آسيا الوسطى إلى “النصرة” و”داعش”، في الوقت الذي تريد واشنطن لها أن تساعدها مستقبلاً في مخطّطاتها لتضييق الحصار على روسيا، كما ساعدت فصائل “الجهاديين الأفغان” أميركا في تحقيق هدفها الأول، وهو إسقاط الاتحاد السوفياتي وتمزيقه، وفق نظرية الحزام الأخضر، فقد بات واضحاً أن واشنطن تخطط للعودة إلى هذا الحزام، وتريد لتركيا أن يكون لها دور أساسي في تفعيله، ولكن بعد الاتفاق مع إردوغان على صفقة شاملة تحقّق للطرفين الحد الأكبر من المكاسب المباشرة وغير المباشرة، وهو ما يستعدّ له الرئيسان بايدن وإردوغان عشية المكالمة الهاتفية بين الطرفين، والتي يبدو أنها تأخّرت بسبب كثرة المواضيع التي ستكون أمامهما وصعوبتها وتشابكها، وهما يحتاجان إلى بعضهما البعض.

ومقابل الدعم المالي والسياسي لإردوغان، الذي يبدو أنه في أمس الحاجة إليه، يريد الرئيس بايدن لتركيا أن تعود إلى خمسينيات القرن الماضي، وتثبت ولاءها المطلق لواشنطن والحلف الأطلسي، الذي يبدو واضحاً أنه يستعد لمرحلة جديدة من الحرب النفسية والاقتصادية والسياسية ضد روسيا، وهذه المرة عبر حدائقها الخلفية جنوباً وغرباً، وهو ما يعني حاجتها إلى دعم الرئيس إردوغان بسبب علاقاته ودوره في جمهوريات آسيا الوسطى الإسلامية (كازاخستان وتركمنستان وقرغيزيا وأوزبكستان)، كما هو الحال في القوقاز، حيث ترتبط تركيا مع أذربيجان وجورجيا بعلاقات مميزة، وتسعى واشنطن لضمّها إلى الحلف الأطلسي، ومعها أوكرانيا.

وتكتسب أحداث أرمينيا في هذا التوقيت أهمية إضافية، بعد أن تحوّلت إلى ساحة مباشرة للتدخل الأميركي والفرنسي ضد الدور الروسي التقليدي. وتراقب أنقرة كل هذه التدخلات عن كثب؛ أولاً لأنّ أرمينيا دولة مجاورة لها، وثانياً بسبب المعلومات التي تتحدث عن احتمالات أن يعترف الرئيس بايدن في 24 نيسان/أبريل القادم بالإبادة الأرمنية في العهد العثماني إبان الحرب العالمية الأولى وخلالها، من دون أن تهمل واشنطن العلاقة المميزة بين أنقرة وكييف، وعلى حساب المخططات الروسية في أوكرانيا، إذ أعلن إردوغان أكثر من مرة رفضه قرار بوتين “ضم” شبه جزيرة القرم إلى روسيا، في الوقت الذي تتحدّث المعلومات عن تعاون واسع جداً بين تركيا وأوكرانيا في جميع المجالات، وخصوصاً الصناعات العسكرية، ومنها الطائرات المسيّرة والدبابات والصواريخ، مع دعم تركي كبير للأقليّة المسلمة في القرم.

كما نجحت أنقرة في إقامة علاقات مميزة مع معظم جمهوريات الاتحاد السوفياتي السابق ودول أوروبا الشرقية التي لها ذكريات سيئة مع موسكو، وهو ما قد يحتاجه الرئيس بايدن في حساباته المستقبلية لتضييق الحصار على روسيا داخل حدودها أو في أي مكان آخر، وبشكل خاص أميركا اللاتينية، التي نجح إردوغان في إقامة علاقات مميّزة مع أبرز رئيس دولة فيها، نيكولاس مادورو، رغم كلّ التناقضات الشخصية والعقائدية والسياسية بينهما.

وقد يحتاج الرئيس بايدن إلى دعم تركي لمخططاته ومشاريعه في الشرق الأوسط، وخصوصاً في سوريا، التي تحولت إلى خندق أمامي للدفاع عن المصالح الروسية في المنطقة، وعبرها في العديد من الساحات الإقليمية والدولية التي تنافسها فيها واشنطن وبعض العواصم الغربية، وأحياناً أنقرة، على الرغم من تناقض المصالح بين جميع هذه العواصم.

وفي جميع الحالات، يبدو واضحاً أننا لن ننتظر طويلاً حتى نرى ما سيطلبه بايدن من إردوغان، وكيف سيرد الأخير على هذه المطالب، وأهمها من دون شك العودة إلى السلوك القومي والديني والتاريخي التركي ضد روسيا. وقد سعى الرئيس بوتين طيلة السنوات الخمس الأخيرة، وبعد اعتذار إردوغان منه إثر إسقاط الطائرة الروسية، لسد الطريق على هذا الاحتمال، من خلال مجموعة من العلاقات الاقتصادية والسياسية والعسكرية المتشابكة مع أنقرة وانعكاساتها على التنسيق والتعاون والعمل المشترك في سوريا.

ومع المعلومات التي تتوقع للرئيس بايدن أن يصفي كل حساباته مع أنقرة، سواء كان سلباً أو إيجاباً، يجد الرئيس إردوغان نفسه في وضع لا يحسد عليه أبداً، بعد أن بات واضحاً أن خياراته محدودة، فإما يستمر في الوضع الحالي في العلاقة مع موسكو وواشنطن، وهو ما لن يقبل به بايدن، وإما يتمادى في تعاونه مع روسيا وحليفاتها، وهو مستحيل تماماً.

وفي هذه الحالة، لا يبقى أمامه، في ظلّ وضعه الصعب جداً داخلياً، إلا الاتفاق مع الرئيس بايدن على محاور المرحلة القادمة، وبالحد الأدنى من الخسائر في علاقاته مع روسيا التي لا يريد أن يعاديها، كما يرغب بايدن، الذي يعرف الجميع أنه يملك الكثير من الأوراق الخطيرة ضده شخصياً ورسمياً.

ويبقى السؤال الأهم: هل سيضع بايدن هذه الأوراق على الطاولة ويطلب حسمها أم سيطلب من إردوغان أن يستخدم ما يملكه من الأوراق في حدائق روسيا الخلفية، مقابل تقديم دعم مطلق له في حدائق الآخرين!؟

Chechnya’s Kadyrov announces sanctions against Chechnya’s Kadyrov announces sanctions against Pompeoo

July 25, 2020

Selected by Amarynth for the Saker Blog

https://tass.com/politics/1181913

Also titled as The Little Mouse that Roared – and what a roar.

Chechnya’s head expressed his outrage at the recent sanctions imposed against his family members

GROZNY, July 24. /TASS/. Head of Russia’s Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov has banned US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from entering the region, he announced at a meeting in Grozny on Friday.

On July 20, the US State Department imposed visa sanctions against Kadyrov, his wife and daughters.

“I invited Mr. Pompeo to visit, but now in front of everyone I am saying that I don’t have the right to do it. <…> That’s it, I am revoking the invitation and announcing the imposition of all sanctions against him that the region has, including blocking all his accounts. They did the same thing to me,” he specified.

The head of Chechnya expressed his outrage at the recent sanctions imposed against his family members. “If I committed a crime, what do my children have to do with it? Where is it written that married daughters are responsible for their father’s sins. What does my wife, who doesn’t get involved in politics or anything, have to do with it? This is ridiculous. They just began their election campaigning,” Kadyrov stressed.

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(Take that! Pompeo)

Putin Didn’t Disappear: Russia’s Ongoing Decentralization Process

By Andrew Korybko

Global Research, May 05, 2020

The Western Mainstream Media’s aggressively propagated infowar narrative that President Putin “disappeared” and is “paralyzed” in the face of World War C is factually false because it ignores the Russian leader’s regular video conferences with various officials that are widely reported on by his country’s domestic media, which actually prove that he’s decentralizing state affairs to a degree by delegating important tasks to relevant decision makers, as all responsible leaders should do during times of crisis such as this one.

Yet Another Infowar Product From The Fake News Factory

The Western Mainstream Media never tires when it comes to disparaging President Putin even if their latest infowar narrative contradicts everything that they’ve spent over the last decade trying to indoctrinate their audience into believing. The so-called “Fourth Estate” previously invested much of its efforts into wrongly depicting the Russian leader as a “dictator” who’s supposedly “obsessed with controlling everything” in his country, which is why it’s so surprising that they’re now aggressively propagating the notion that he’s “disappeared” and is “paralyzed” in the face of World War C. This claim is factually false since it’s refuted by his country’s domestic media consistently reporting on his regular videoconferences with various officials, but it’s likely being pushed upon the public anyhow in order to artificially manufacture a sense of uncertainty about Russia’s long-term political stability, which could then be used as another angle from which to attack the progress that he and Trump have recently made in pursuit of their hoped-for “New Detente“.

Russia’s Ongoing Decentralization Process Should Be Celebrated, Not Condemned

Far from shirking his duties, President Putin is embracing them like never before, albeit in a manner which admittedly caught his critics unaware. They’ve invested so much time, money, and effort into portraying him as a “power-hungry dictator” that they’re simply unable to adapt their weaponized narrative to the reality that he’s now decided to decentralize state affairs to a degree by delegating important tasks to relevant decision makers, as all responsible leaders should do during times of crisis such as this one. No single individual, let alone of the world’s geographically largest state, can deal entirely on their own with such a situation as World War C, hence why President Putin made the wise choice to share the burden of leadership with other officials. It would have been egocentric to the extreme as well as highly dangerous if he believed that he could single-handedly manage Russia’s response to COVID-19, which is impossible for any one person to do. Nobody has the knowledge, time, and management capabilities to take full “dictatorial” control over such a crisis.

Russia Isn’t A One-Man Show

President Putin is aware of his limitations as a human being, and he also has an eye on his eventual retirement from public life, whether that’s as early as 2024 or perhaps even as late as 2036 if the public approves constitutional amendments to allow him to run for two additional terms during a forthcoming referendum, the date of which is presently unknown since the it’s been indefinitely postponed because of World War C. Whatever one’s criticisms of the Russian leader might be, few would ever assert that he isn’t a skilled manager, for better or for worse depending on their perspective. With this in mind, it’s completely within his character to gradually prepare for the country’s inevitable transfer of power whenever that moment arrives, hence why he understands the importance of delegating responsibilities to relevant officials in the context of the current crisis in order to reduce the country’s dependence on him personally. This is also in line with the proposed constitutional amendments that aim to reduce the power of the presidency in favor of parliament.

Russia’s Decentralization Is Over A Decade In The Making

There’s some truth to the claims that President Putin previously concentrated a lot of power in his hands, but that was entirely legal within the framework of the Russian Constitution and was mostly exercised in response to the federal intervention in Chechnya that characterized the country’s most pressing domestic challenge at the beginning of the century. Under powerful presidential systems such as Russia’s, the elected head of state has the final say in deciding the country’s course of action in crisis situations, which enables it to more rapidly respond to challenges as they develop. Seeing as how that particular one has been completely resolved, it was fitting for President Putin to begin gradually loosening the reins of control over the country as it returned to normalcy, which explains the expansion of his United Russia party throughout the land and its embedding of influence into practically all public state structures. This initial phase of pragmatic decentralization was followed by the “technocracy” that former President Medvedev encouraged during his time in office.

Constructive Criticism Of Russia Should Be Fact-Based & Fair

The third phase is the present one that’s currently unfolding before the world’s eyes whereby President Putin has sought to constitutionally reform the state legislature in order to grant it more responsibilities by the time he leaves office. The unexpected onset of World War C simply accelerated these plans that were already in progress since the official end of the second federal intervention in Chechnya in April 2009. Therefore, it’s not out of the ordinary whatsoever for President Putin to take advantage of these circumstances by “leading from behind” while tasking relevant officials to “lead from the front” in his stead, which they’ll eventually have to do once he inevitably leaves office. As the author wrote in March 2018, “It’s Okay To Constructively Criticize Russia, Even President Putin Does It!“, and even RT published an usually scathing op-ed the other day about the Russian government titled “Once he recovers from Covid-19, PM Mishustin faces new ordeal – reviving economy & Kremlin’s popularity with thinning oil kitty“. Such criticisms, however, should be fact-based and fair, but that isn’t the case with the Mainstream Media’s latest infowar attack, which therefore makes it propaganda.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorldThe World Cup Has Political Dimensions, and They’re All to Russia’s BenefitThe original source of this article is Global ResearchCopyright © Andrew Korybko, Global Research, 2020

Our fundamental disagreement about WWII, Hitler, Jews and race

THE SAKER • FEBRUARY 7, 2020

Our fundamental disagreement about WWII, Hitler, Jews and race

The topic of Russians and Jews is clearly a “hot” one. Over the past few years I wrote several articles on this topic including “Putin and Israel A Complex and Multi-Layered Relationship”, “Why Is Putin “Allowing” Israel to Bomb Syria?”, “Russia, Israel and the Values of “Western Civilization” – Where Is the Truth?” and “Debunking the Rumors About Russia Caving in to Israel”. And yet, for a while now I have felt that there is much more which could, and should, be said on this topic.

Recent events (including Putin’s and Zelenskii’s recent trip to Israel or the latest Polish-Ukrainian theory about the USSR being an accomplice to the Holocaust) again gave me that strong feeling that the way Jews are seen in the West is truly very different from how Jews are viewed in Russia. Yet, in the West, this difference is often (almost always, really!) overlooked and assumptions are made about Russia and Russians which are simply not warranted and which end up being highly misleading. This is why I will try to debunk some of these assumptions today.

First, a very quick and very short look into our recent history

The very best book to read on Russian-Jewish relations is “200 Years Together” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The problem with this book is that has never been officially translated into English. Yup, that’s right. A CRUCIAL book by a Nobel Prize winner can be so controversial that nobody in the publishing business has dared to print it. Happily, a number of websites offer unofficial “samizdat” translations, see here, here and here. I cannot vouch for the quality of these translations as I read the book in Russian, not in English. But yeah, in the “land of the free”, the putative “brave” do not get to read a book if that book debunks the western narrative about Russia and Jews. By the way, Solzhenitsyn’s masterpiece is not the only such book which exists only in Russian, there are many more including Andrei Dikii’s “Jews in Russia and the USSR” which can also only be found on the Internet Archive here.

I can’t even begin to try to summarize that most interesting, and controversial history here. All I will say for right now is that when we speak of “Russians” and “Jews” we need to separate these categories into 4 subcategories:

• Russians from what would be considered Russia today, in other words, “Great-Russians” (here “great” does not indicate a superiority, but only a peripheral place of residence, meaning Russians who don’t live in central Russia). For our purposes I will from now on simply call them “Russians”.
• Russians from what would be considered the Ukraine today in other words, “Small-Russians” (meaning Russians living near the cradle of the Russian civilization, Kiev). For our purposes, I will from now on refer to them as “Ukrainians”, but only in a geographical sense, not a cultural one.
• Russian Jews (as opposed to Ukrainian Jews)
• Ukrainian Jews (as opposed to Russian Jews)

These four subgroups have had a very different historical experience and they need to be considered separately, as lumping them all together really does not allow any analysis.

Besides, and as I have also mentioned it in the past, the Ukrainian nationalist propaganda does, in fact, have some truth to it. Yes, it is a grossly distorted truth, and it is mixed in with an avalanche of lies, but still, not all of it can simply be dismissed. For example, while there never was any “Ukraine” in history, and while what is called today the “Ukrainian language” is not really Ukrainian at all (the “surzhik” would be the real thing), it still remains an undeniable fact that the Polish occupation of southern and eastern Russia (which is what “the Ukraine” is – Russia’s southeastern “borderland” which is what the word “Ukraine” originally meant) left an extremely profound mark on those Russians who lived under the Polish-Latin occupation. I won’t go into historical details today as I already did that hereand here, but I will just say that this tragic history eventually inspired one of the favorite slogans of Ukrainian nationalists: “to drown all the Polaks and the Moskals in Kike blood” (or any variation of these three nationalities).

Charming, no?

The undeniable historical truth is that the centuries long occupation of the Russian eastern frontier lands by the Poles and their Latin masters created so much hatred between all the nationalities involved that it appears that every time they had a chance to try to persecute or kill each other, they immediately did so. Here area few examples of that kind of violence:

• The (in)famous “pogroms”: these were spontaneous and violent uprisings and subsequent brutal riots against Jews by their resentful neighbors. By the way, during the Civil War, the Reds often were the worst perpetrators of these pogroms because they also saw the comparatively wealthy Jews as class enemies in the Marxist sense of the word.
• The very high percentage of Jews among the first generation Bolsheviks (80%-85% according to Vladimir Putin; fwiw, I agree with this figure). These Bolshevik Jews were typically concentrated in the secret police organs and they typically spearheaded the massacre of millions of Orthodox Christians (which have since been gloried by the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile and, later, somewhat reluctantly and only partially, by the Moscow Patriarchate, as the “New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia”).
• A very high percentage of Jews among the Party leaders during the (truly horribly brutal) collectivization and and dekulakization which took place all over the Soviet Union but which the Ukrainian nationalists (and the western propaganda machine) characterize as a deliberate anti-Ukrainian genocide they call the “Holodomor” (yes, I know, Wikipedia entries on all these topics are pure propaganda, but I link to them precisely so you can see what the Ukrainian propaganda writes).
• A very high percentage of Ukrainians in the post-Stalin Soviet elites, many of whom participated in the bloody purges of the CPSU by Stalin; and since about 80%+ of the top Party officials were Jews, these purges necessarily involved a lot of repressed Jews (whether guilty ones who themselves were covered in innocent blood or innocent ones, who were simply repressed with the rest of them).

I could list more examples, but I think that these are sufficient for our purposes. What we can immediately see is that there are significant differences between what took place in modern Russia and in the modern Ukraine, including:

An example of a crucial geographical difference would be “pogroms” which, contrary to western propaganda, pogroms all took place in what would be the modern Ukraine today, never in Russia.

There is also a difference in time: Russians in the Ukraine were persecuted by Poles and Jews for centuries whereas Russians in what is modern Russia today were primarily persecuted by Bolshevik Jews “only” between 1917 and Stalin’s purges of the party in the late 1930s.

And then, there is the crucial, truly immense, difference which WWII made.

Next, a look at what happened during World War II and the Nazi occupation

When the Nazis launched their attack on the Soviet Union there were a lot of Russians and Ukrainians who welcomed the Nazis, not necessarily because they liked the Nazi ideology but because many of them hated their Bolshevik oppressors even more than they disliked the Germans. After all, the horrors of the Civil War and of the Collectivization were still present in the mind of millions of people both in the (newly created) Ukrainian SSR and in the Russian SSR.

I would like to remind all those who nowadays try very hard to forget it, that the Nazi ideology characterizes both Russians and Ukrainians as subhumans (Untermensch) whose sole purpose would be to serve their Aryan master race overlords (Herrenvolk) in the newly conquered living space (Lebensraum). Simply put: Hitler promised his followers that they would be very happy slave owners! It is no wonder that the prospective slaves felt otherwise…

In the course of the war, however, profound differences began to emerge:

First, in the Ukraine, the Nazi ideology DID inspire a lot of nationalists for the exact same reasons that Nazi ideology inspired nationalist Poles (who were Hitler’s first most loyal allies only to later be betrayed by him). Over the centuries the Papacy not only created the Ukrainian nationalist identity, it then actively fostered it every time Russia was weakened (if that topic is of interest to you, see here). The bitter truth which folks in the West don’t like to be reminded of is that the regimes of Petain, Franco, Pavelic, Pilsudksi, etc. were all created and supported by the Papacy which, of course, also supported Bandera and his Ukronazi deathsquads. As for Hitler himself, he was initially strongly supported by the UK (just as Trotsky was supported by the Jewish bankers in the US). Indeed, russophobia has a long and “distinguished” history in the West: western leaders change, as do their ideological rationalizations, but their hatred and fear of Russia always remains.

In contrast, General Andrei Vlasov, who created the “Russian Liberation Army” (ROA) had exactly zero support in the West, and very little support in Russia proper. The ideology of the ROA was a mix of moderate nationalism with some no less moderate socialism. In hindsight, it never stood a chance of becoming truly popular in Russia simply because the sight of a Russian general wearing a Nazi uniform was not something that most Russians could serenely look at, whereas in the current Nazi-occupied Ukraine, Nazi uniforms and symbols are still very popular. Last, but certainly not least, the demented and outright genocidal policies of the Nazis in occupied Russia resulted in such a blowback that the war to liberate Russia from the Nazis became a war of national survival which the vast majority of Russians fully supported.

It is also interesting how differently the Anglo powers treated the Ukronazis and the Russians of the ROA: the West lovingly imported to the US and Canada all the Ukronazis it could get its hands on, yet at the same time the West forcibly repatriated millions of Russians, including POW and ROA members, with often horrible consequences for the repatriates. As for General Vlasov himself, he was executed along with other officers accused of treason.

For the Ukrainian nationalists, WWII began as a God-sent chance to finally bring about their dream to “drown all the Polaks and the Moskals in Kike blood”, and then this dream was crushed by the Soviet counter-attack and subsequent annihilation of most (about 80%) of the German military machine. And while many Ukrainians (and Poles) did see the Soviets as their liberators from the Nazi horrors, the Ukronazis obviously saw the Soviet Army solely as an occupation force which they resisted for as long as they could (after the end of the war, it still took the Soviets several years to finally crush the Ukronazi underground). And while most Russians felt like they were the real victors of WWII, the Ukronazi nationalists felt that they had been defeated. Again. The same goes for the Poles, by the way (this trauma gave birth to something I refer to as the “Pilban syndrome”).

Now for the self-evident truism about Jews: while many Russians remained acutely aware of the Jewish role in the Bolshevik revolution and, especially, in the class terror which followed, they did not see ALL Jews as enemies of Russia, especially not when

1. There were plenty of patriotic Jews who loved Russia and/or the USSR
2. That Hitler’s demented racism inevitably had to bring Jews and Russians together, even if only for a while and mostly under the “common enemy” heading.
3. Many (most?) Russians know for a fact that Nazi concentration/extermination camps did, in fact, exist even if they did not kill 6M Jews, even if they had no gas chambers and no crematoria (except to deal with insect-born diseases). Why? Because it was the Soviet military which liberated most of these camps and because there were plenty of non-Jewish Russians/Soviets in these camps. Finally, besides the camps themselves, most Russians also know about the infamous Einsatzgruppen which probably murdered even more Jews (and non-Jews) than all the concentration/extermination camps combined. The fact is that Nazi atrocities are not seriously challenged by most Russian historians.

The bottom line is this: whatever (at the time very real) hostility history had created between Jews and Russians, World War II had a huge impact on these perceptions. That is not to say that the Russians have forgotten the genocidal policies of Lenin and Trotsky, but only that after WWII, most Russians justly felt that they were victors, not defeated losers.

The Ukrainian nationalists, in contrast, were “multi-defeat” losers: they were defeated by the Germans, the Russians and even the Poles (who rarely attack anybody unless their prospective victim is already agonizing or unless there is some “big guy” protecting them – Churchill was quite right with his “greedy hyena of Europe” comment!). And now, more recently, they were soundly defeated not once, but TWICE, by the Novorussians. That kind of “performance” will often result in a nationalistic reaction.

And that is true not only for the Ukraine, but also very much applies to the West of 2020.

Does the collective West also suffer from the same “multi-defeat” complex?

It seems to me that most people reading these lines already know that the “collective West” aka the “AngloZionist Empire” is in terrible shape. Just look at the political chaos in the US, the UK, France, Germany and all the rest of the NATO/EU countries. The West is not only losing militarily and economically, it is also agonizing culturally, socially, morally and spiritually. Furthermore, that which we all used to think of as “western values” is now being replaced by some insipid “multiculturalism” which seems to pious euphemism for the obvious plan to erase pretty much all of the western historical and cultural legacy. Like all forms of persecution, this one is also resulting in an increasingly powerful case of ideological blowback: a very dangerous and toxic resurgence of both Fascism and National-Socialism.

How could a person (Hitler) and an ideology (National-Socialism) be both declared uniquely evil AND, at the same time, undergo at least a partial rehabilitation in the same society? Simple! The only condition necessary to make that happen is to condition people to accept cognitive dissonances and not to be too troubled when they happen. The average citizen of the Empire has been conditioned to accept, and even embrace, such cognitive dissonances quite literally since birth and he has become very, very good at that. But there is also a historiographical blowback in action here:

Following WWII and, especially, following the 1970s, the Zionists made what I consider to be a disastrous mistake: they decided to present Hitler and his ideology as some kind of special and unique form of evil which supersedes any and all, past or even future, imaginable forms of evil. And just to make sure that this claim would stick, they decided to add some highly specific claims including the “official’” figure of 6 million murdered Jews, the gas chambers and crematoria being the most famous ones, but there were many more (including electrocution pools, human skin lamp shades and human fat soaps – but which had to be ditched after being proven false). Eventually these claims all came under very effective attack by the so-called “revisionist historians” who have since proven beyond reasonable doubt that these specific claims were false. That did not make these historians very popular with the rulers of the Empire who, instead of allowing for of a healthy historical debate, decided to make “revisionism” a criminally punishable thoughtcrime for which historians could be jailed, sometimes for years! The reaction to that kind of abuse of power was inevitable.

One of the most pernicious result of this policy of criminalizing historical investigations into WWII has been the fact that many people in the West concluded that since these specific claims were bunk, then all of the claims about Nazi atrocities were bunk too. Huge logical mistake! The fact that these specific claims have already been debunked in no way implies that OTHER widely reported atrocities did not occur.

For example, the fact that gas chambers were probably not used to kill anybody (at least not in significant amounts) does not at all imply that many hundreds of thousands, or even million of people, were not killed by execution, starvation or disease (typhus, dysentery, etc.). Just look at the death rates in Japanese POW camps, and they had no gas chambers or crematoria. As for the Soviets, they deported “class enemies” from their homes and simply released them in the middle of the Siberian taiga during the winter and with no survival gear: most of them also quickly died, simply from exposure.

The simple truth is that any modern state has the means to murder people on an industrial scale even without the use of such exotic (and, frankly, ill-suited) techniques as gas chambers or crematoria (in Rwanda, they mostly used crude machetes). But western historians are banned from even researching these topics!

This situation resulted in an environment in the West in which one cannot criticize (or even doubt!) Jews or things Jewish without immediately being called an “anti-Semite”. Ditto for anybody daring to present another version of WWII. That this kind of collective brainwashing would inevitably result in a massive blowback was easy to predict but, alas, the Zionists never had the foresight to see this coming. Either that, or they were quite happy to report a “surge in anti-Semitism” in the West to extort even more political power (and money!). Whatever may be the case, it is close to impossible in the current West to freely and openly discuss these topics.

Now a quick comparison with modern Russia

The political environment in Russia is radically different. For one thing, it is not illegal (or even improper) in Russia to criticize Jews, or modern “Judaism” (really a modern form of rabbinical Phariseism) or Israel or the Zionist ideology (which, by the way, the USSR did denounce and oppose as a form of racism). Yes, there are still (pretty bad) laws on the books forbidding the promotion of national hatred and “extremist speech”, but the truth is that as long as you only investigate historical topics (such as the real number of Jews murdered by the Nazis) and you do not advocate (or engage in) violence you will be fine. Not only that, but you can find pretty much any and all anti-Jewish/Zionist books on the Russian Internet for easy and free download. Finally, while a lot of Jews did leave the USSR, those who stayed (or have since returned) did that of their own free will and that strongly suggests that, unlike their brethren in Israel, many (most?) Russian Jews do not have feelings of hatred for Russia, the Russian people or even the Orthodox Church (some do, of course, but this is a minority).

Some near sighted Jews regularly deplore that the political discourse in Russia is not as tightly controlled as the one in the West. I would simply like to remind them that the much more permissive intellectual environment of Russia has NOT resulted in an automatic fusion between patriotism and hostility to Jews, as is sadly the case in the West (unless, of course, we are dealing with what French philosopher and dissident Alain Soral calls “National-Zionism” which is a separate phenomenon which I discussed in some detail here).

True, when patriotism (love for one’s country) turns into nationalism (love of one’s ethnicity), then things typically go south, but that is a danger of which the Kremlin is acutely aware of and that is why Russian nationalists are, after Russian Wahabis, the most frequently jailed people in Russia under anti extremism laws (keep in mind that both Russian nationalists and Russian Wahabis typically not only disseminate “extremist literature” but they also are typically engaged in one form of violence or another, thus they are often jailed on terrorism charges too).

An increasing number of Russia are, however, puzzled by what they see as a slow-motion rehabilitation of Hitler and the Nazi regime. For example, while in the West the official doxa is still that Hitler and the Nazis were the worst evil in history, there is a rapidly growing “alternative” viewpoint, mostly found on the Internet, of course, in which Hitler is viewed as a much more complex person, who has been unjustly demonized and whose actions need to be placed in a “correct” historical context. And, in fact, there is some truth to that – Hitler was a complex personality and the Nazis were demonized beyond way beyond anything reasonable. Finally, the proponents of this “rehabilitation” will always point out that Hitler’s enemies were at least as ruthless and evil has he was. Again, there is also much truth to that. However, when the EU declares in a solemn vote that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were both equally responsible for WWII, then a fundamental red line is crossed, one which places an “equal” sign not only between the aggressor and the aggressed but also between those who were defeated and those who were victorious.

As I have often written in the past, under international law the ultimate, most evil, crime is not “genocide” or “crimes against humanity”. It is the “crime of aggression” because, in the words of the US judge who declared this principle, “the crime of aggression contains all the other crimes”, which is only logical. Thus by accusing the USSR of aggression, the EU is basically annulling them findings of the Nuremberg Tribunal, it makes the USSR every bit as guilty of all the atrocities of WWII as the Nazis.

Are the Russians correct when they say that there is a slow-motion rehabilitation of Hitler and his ideology in the West?

Absolutely!

The fact that this slo-mo rehabilitation is still currently and mostly confined to the margins of the political discourse does not change the Russian awareness that no matter how much Hitler and his minions are disliked or even hated in the West, Russia and Russians will always be hated even much more. This is also true of what the West calls “Islamic extremism” which is only “bad” when it is not fully controlled by the West (terrorists!!), and which is “good”, axiomatically so, when directed against Russia or other Orthodox nations (freedom fighters!!).

Under these circumstances, is it really surprising that many (most?) Russians feel like the West is a much bigger danger to the Russian civilizational realm than any anti-Russian plans concocted by Jews, Zionists or the Israelis?

Absolutely not!

Not only do most Russians hate Hitler and everything he stood for, they also truly understand that the vast majority of Jews murdered by the Third Reich were simple, innocent, people whose only crime was to be of the same ethnicity/religion as some other Jews who did, indeed, richly deserved to be hated for their racist messianism (be it religious or secular). That is a fundamental injustice which Russians will never accept because accepting it would be a betrayal of truth (a hugely important concept for the Russian civilization) and no less of a betrayal of the memory of all the innocents murdered by the Nazis.

Conclusion one: history matters, a lot!

Whatever we all may think of Jewish identity politics or whatever our opinion of the Soviet Union, it is undeniable that Hitler’s policies inflicted unspeakable suffering upon both Russians and Jews. Western Alt-Righters, who still delude themselves into thinking that Russians share in their racist delusions, can deny and denounce this, but the fact is that history has forever created a bond between Jews and Russians: their common memory of the mass atrocities perpetuated against them by the Nazis. No amount of political gesticulations will change that.

That does not, of course, mean that Putin, the Kremlin or anybody else is an “ally” of Israel or that Putin and Bibi Netanyahu are working together (or for each other). This utter nonsense is a completely false conclusion resulting from a fundamental and profound misreading of Russian history and Russian culture. But it goes even further than that. I would argue that the history of the Russian culture is also fundamentally incompatible with any racist/racialist ideas.

The ideology of pre-1917 Russia can be described as “Orthodox monarchism”. This is not really correct for a long list of reasons (reality is always more complex than buzz-words and slogans), but by and large you could say that what was considered morally right or morally wrong was defined by the Russian Orthodox Church. Well, it just so happens that while original Christianity (i.e. Orthodoxy) was very critical of rabbinical “Judaism” (the religion and wordview), that same original Christianity was far less hostile to Jews (the ethnicity) then western Christian demominations. In fact, true Christianity has always been pro-patriotic but anti-nationalistic. This was also the practice in the Eastern Roman Empire (whose political structure Russia inherited). By the way, this is also true for the 2^nd religion of Russia, Islam.

Then, after the 1917 Revolution, Russia was initially submitted to two decades of Jewish terror, especially a kind of terror directed against the Russian people and the Orthodox faith. With the coming to power of Stalin, however, major changes took place (and most of those who had drowned Russia in innocent blood were themselves executed during the famous “purges”). And while Stalin never was an “anti-Semite” (this is silly nonsense which both Stalin’s actions and writings directly contradict), his purges (and reforms) did profoundly change the nature of the Soviet regime, including the ethnic composition of the leaders of the CPSU which became much more diverse.

Speaking of the Soviet Union in general, it is also important to remember that the Marxist-Leninist ideology also rejects racial and ethnic differences and, instead, advocates a solidarity of all people against their class oppressors.

Thus neither the pre-1917 nor the post-1917 mainstream Russian ideology/worldview are a viable ground to try to promote racist ideas. And, thankfully, neither is modern (“Putin’s”) Russia.

The truth is that Russia which, as I mentioned above, is the political heir to the East Roman Empire (aka “Byzantium” in western parlance) has ALWAYS been multi-religious, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and pretty much any and all other “multi-something” you can think of. For all the many sins of the Russian people during their history, racism was never one of them!

For example, this is also why, while most people in the West see Islam (and Muslims) as “aliens”, most Russians are totally used to them and see them as longtime neighbors. That does not mean that Russian’s don’t remember the dozen or so wars Russia fought against the Ottomans, nor does it mean that Russia has forgiven the Wahabi atrocities in Chechnia. It simply and only means that Muslims, and even Turks, are not see as “national enemies” by Russians.

The same is true for Jews. Yes, the Russians do remember what Jews did to them during the early years of the Bolshevik regime, but that memory, that awareness, does NOT typically result into any kind of racism, including any type of anti-Jewish racism. Nor do the horrors committed by Jewish Bolsheviks obfuscate all the very real contributions of various Jews to the Russian culture.

By the way, it is important to remember here that while it is true that most first-generation Bolsheviks were Jews, it is not true that most Jews were Bolsheviks. In fact, Jews were found pretty much everywhere, including amongst Menshevik’s, anarchists, Bundists, etc…

So yes, Jews and Russians mostly lived together for about 200 years, and much of our common history is tragic, painful and even shameful, but at the end of the day, it would be false to think that most Russians either dislike or fear Jews. They do not. Even when they are critical of this or that personality, ideology or religion (original Christianity will always be the ultimate enemy of rabbinical Judaism, just as rabbinical Judaism will always remain the ultimate enemy of original Christianity; we can understand why that is so, or we can deplore it, but we should never forget or deny this!).

If any self-described anti-Semite reads these words and is absolutely outraged by what I just wrote, please also make sure to read “The Invention of the Jewish People” by Shlomo Sand” which will show to you that the very notion of “ethnicity” (whether Jewish or non-Jewish) is a modern invention with very little actual basis in history, especially in the history of multi-cultural empires. Simply put: in a culture which does not really believe in the importance of ethnicity no truly racist ideology can develop. It is really that simple!

Yes, I know about Dostoevskii’s and Rozanov’s dislike for Jews (and Poles, by the way), and yes I know about the Pale of Settlement (won’t touch this here, but it sure was not what western historians in the West think it was – just read Solzhenitsyn!). I also know about the “Blood Libel” (won’t touch this one either, but I will recommend you read the 2007 book by Israeli historian Ariel Toaff “Passovers of Blood”) and about all the other myths spread in the West (by Jews and non-Jews) about “Russian anti-Semitism”. But the truth is simple: while there were many instances in history when Jews and Russians clashed (including the 10^th century destruction of Khazaria by Russian forces or the 15^th century struggle against the “Heresy of the Judaizers” – which, by the way, Wikipedia does a very bad job describing: in reality this was an early attempt by Kabbalists to infiltrate the Russian Orthodox Church just as they had successfully infiltrated the Papacy). Yet, these conflicts did not resulted in any major hostility of Russians towards Jews (the inverse is, alas, not nearly as true).

Conclusion two: Putin, Zelenskii and the Israelis

The recent trip of both Zelenskii and Putin to Israel has, again, brought the topic of the Jewish, Russian and Ukrainian “triangle” to the front page news. The Poles also seized the opportunity to make things worse for themselves when they chimed in on it all. You read the stories, so no need to repeat it all here. What was most impressive about this event was that Zelenskii decided that he would travel to Israel, only to then declare that he would not participate in the commemorative events. Why? Clearly, he was terrified that the Ukronazis will denounce him for caving in to Zionist pressure.

Putin did the exact opposite, not only did he travel to Israel and he spoke at the event, he also reminded the (mostly Jewish) audience of the horrors which the Russian people also suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Clearly, Putin did not fear that some Russian nationalists would accuse him of caving in to Zionist pressure. Why not?

Why could Putin speak so freely?

For two very simple reasons:

First, and unlike the Ukrainians or the Poles, the Russians have exactly zero guilt about what happened in WWII. In spite of all the lies currently spread in the West, the Soviet Union did not start WWII – the Soviet Union pretty much single-handedly defeated Hitler and ended the war (the entire Anglo effort was worth no more than 20% and only came after the Soviets defeated theWehrmacht and the SS in Stalingrad and elsewhere).

Second, Jewish supremacism was very short lived in the USSR (roughly from 1917 to 1937) and neither Putin nor any other Russian political leader will let claims of exclusive “special” Jewish suffering go unchallenged. And while most Russian politicians don’t feel the need to express any doubts about the “official” 6 million figure, they do like to remind their Jewish friends that the Russian nation suffered anywhere between 20 to 27 million dead people during WWII, thus denying Jewish victims any superior victim status over non-Jewish victims.

Our fundamental disagreement about WWII, Hitler and Jews

Likewise, it is BECAUSE Russians have zero sense of guilt towards Jews, that Putin could mention this figure of 80-85% of Jews in the first Bolshevik regime in front of an assembly of Haredi rabbis (see the video here for yourself:

Can you imagine Merkel or Trump daring to say these things in front of such an audience?

Unthinkable!

Conclusion three:

Ever since Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia has been gradually and steadily separating herself from the collective West. This process is not so much about being “against” the West as it is about being “different” from the West, but unapologetically so! This is especially visible in the nature and quality of the political discourse in Russia which is truly dramatically different from the kind of hyper-controlled (and, of course, hyper-manipulated) political discourse in the West. Simply put, Russians live in a much more open and diverse intellectual landscape than their western neighbors. As a result, it would be a major mistake to assume, for example, that Russian patriots hold views similar to those held by western nationalists. Hence the existence of what we could call “Our fundamental disagreement about WWII, Hitler, Jews and race”.

The Saker

Bibi in Banderastan, or the importance of words

[this column was written for the Unz Review]

Israeli Prime Minister made it to Kiev today, where he was greeted by the (pseudo) “traditional” Ukronazi slogan “Glory to the Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!”. For somebody like me who dislikes Zionism and Nazism just about the same, it was a sweet irony to see an Israeli Prime Minister officially traveling to the Nazi-occupied Ukraine to commemorate the massacre of Jews at Babii Iar greeted by the very same slogan which the Jews murdered at Babii Iar heard from their Banderite executioners while they were being shot.

STOP!

Do you already hear the choir of voices protesting: how can anyone expecting to be taken seriously write a paragraph about the civil war in the Ukraine with all the following words: Ukronazi, Zionism, Nazism, Nazi-occupied, Jews and Banderite?

That is a very good question.

But I have a better one!

How can anyone expecting to be taken seriously write a paragraph about the civil war in the Ukraine WITHOUT all the following words: Ukronazi, Zionism, Nazism, Nazi-occupied, Jews and Banderite?

Let’s begin with the first question. The obvious implied criticism behind the first question, is very simple and it assumes that there is a profound and inherent contradiction between everything Nazi and Jews/Zionism. Speaking about a “Nazi Jew” or a “Nazi Zionist” is just as nonsensical as speaking about dry water or and diamonds raining from the sky!

Except that both dry water and diamonds raining from the sky do exist in real nature, so let’s not jump to conclusions too fast and see which contradictions are real, and which ones are only apparent.

I won’t even go into the (deliciously controversial) topic of the historical fact of the collaboration of the German National Socialists with various Zionist organizations which, rather naively, thought that a nationalist like Hitler would understand their own nationalism and help them to emigrate to Palestine. But this goes even further than that as Hannah Arendt said, in her superb book “Eichmann in Jerusalem” (see excerpt here or, even better, read the full book (for free!): various Jewish organizations continued to work with/(for?) the Nazis well into the so-called “Holocaust”.

[Sidebar: to be honest, I don’t think that we, safely sitting in the comfort of our homes, should be too quick to condemn these Jewish organizations. Yes, of course, many of them were “naive” (and I am being polite here), but others must have realized that European Jews are in a great deal of danger and must be evacuated at any cost and if the only way to achieve such an evacuation was to deal with the Nazis, then so be it! This is no different than offering a bribe to a jail guard to obtain some kind of favor. Thus I think that Jewish organizations which today categorically deny having collaborated with the Nazis are mistaken on not one, but two grounds: first, the truth is coming out and it is impossible to suppress it and, second, there is nothing shameful in swallowing your disgust to save a person. Except that for the racially deluded minds of modern Zionists, such an admission would take the air out of their silly notion of racial superiority. Hence the categorically crimethink nature of speaking about this]

No, what I want to suggest here is very different: in our 21^st century, most of the 20^th century terminology has lost its meaning. What is a liberal (no, not Hillary!)? What is a Communist (no, not Obama!)? What is a Christian (no, not the Pope!)? What is a democrat (no, not Kamala Harris!)? What is a patriot (no, most definitely not Trump!)? What is a tyrannical dictator (nope, not Putin!)?

You think that I am being facetious here?

Then explain to me how a rabidly Takfiri regime like the one in Saudi Arabia can get help from Zionist Israel? Or how the “democratic West” gave its full support to Takfiris in Chechnia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya and Syria? How is it that during the so-called “Global War on Terror”, (which was supposed to be officially waged against al-Qaeda and its various local subsidiaries, in retaliation for 9/11) the various Takfiri groups only got stronger? Yet what we really see is that the US provides training, financing, coordination and even close air support for pretty much every al-Qaeda type out there?

There are two phenomena which explain this gradual dissolution of meanings into meaningless and insipid categories: first, the correct meaning of many terms has been covered by a thick layer of ideological imperatives and, second, most 21^st century politicians couldn’t care less what any word really means. All they care about is framing the discussion in a way which makes it easy for them to obfuscate their numerous crimes.

The truth about the Ukraine is very simple: yes, there are bona-fide Nazis in the Ukraine and, yes, they have a lot of influence due to their quasi monopoly on violence and total collapse of the state. True, these hardcore Ukronazi freaks are a rather small minority, but one which is well organized, well funded and fully prepared to use violence.

“Jewbanderite“

There are also a lot of Zionists in the Ukraine. And while these folks silently hate each other, they hate (and fear!) Russia much, much more; just like mobsters can fight each other, but can unite against any common threat (such as, say, an honest police chief).

Oh, and yes, there are also plenty of very influential Jews in the Ukraine (Kolomoiskii and Zelenskii being the two best known ones right now) and they have the full backing of the AngloZionist Empire and all of the Zionists interests in the West. And I think that most folks fully understand that. The real reason behind all the protests about me using terms such as “Ukronazi” stems from a very different cause.

The problem is that you get a lot of ruffled feathers when you suggest that the USA, which is supposed to be some kind of “land of the free and the home of the brave” aka “the indispensable nation” is found in bed with the self same folks who the US propaganda machine paints as arch-villains: Nazis, of course, but also Takfiris. As for the Zionists, it would be wrong to say that the US of A is “in bed” with them. No, it’s even worse: the much-maligned and ridiculed term of ZOG (as in “Zionist Occupation Government”) is much more accurate, but it offends those who rather think of themselves as “rulers of the world” than the voiceless serfs of a regime of foreign occupation!

US Americans love to thump their chests while mantrically chanting some nonsense along the lines of “USA is number 1!” and they get really mad when they are told that “the party is over” which I did in this article in which I wrote:

Both US Americans and Europeans will, for the very first time in their history, have to behave like civilized people, which means that their traditional “model of development” (ransacking the entire planet and robbing everybody blind) will have to be replaced by one in which these US Americans and Europeans will have to work like everybody else to accumulate riches

And, just by coincidence, Paul Craig Roberts recently wrote an article entitled “American Capitalism Is Based On Plunder” in which he explained that US foreign policy is basically driven by a plunder imperative and that if that imperative cannot be realized abroad, it will be implemented at home (I wonder if he will be accused of being anti-American or even of “Communism”? It is quite striking to see a paleo-conservative like Paul Craig Roberts basically paraphrasing Lenin and his statement that “imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism” (a historical truism which the western propaganda system is doing its best to bury, obfuscate, ridicule and the like).

Writing things like these typically result in a barrage of ad hominems which, by itself, is quite telling (usually the same 2-3 folks, some probably remunerated for their efforts) There is a Russian saying that “the hat of the head of the thief is burning” (see here for an explanation of this rather weird expression) and this is exactly what is happening here: the folks protesting the loudest are always the ones who are most unwilling to stop the planetary plunder, messianic arrogance and imperial hubris in which they were raised. It is not only their livelihoods which are threatened by such talk, but even their very identity. Hence the very real and very high level of rage they feel.

Finally, there are all the Nazi sympathizers who absolutely hate Jews and for whom any notion of Nazi and Zionist collaboration are just as much a case of crimethink as it is for Zionist Jews to admit that they have collaborated with bona fide Nazis many times in the past.

However, if we set aside silly ideological shackles, we can immediately observe that the kind of ideology of racial superiority which the Nazis are known for can also be found in the Judaic (religious) and Zionist (secular) ideologies. In fact, both National-Socialism and Zionism are just two amongst many more types of European nationalisms which have their root in 19^th century ideological categories.

Let’s try a different approach: what do Ukie “dobrobats”, al-Qaeda forces in Syria, KLA units in Kosovo and Israeli settlers in Palestine have in common? Correct! They are all first and foremost *thugs* who all prey on the weak and defenseless. In other words, they are the perfect tool to force civilians to surrender and accept some kind of foreign rule. That foreign rule is, in each case, the one of the AngloZionist Empire, of course. This, in turn, means that their official ideologies are almost irrelevant, because in reality they are all servants of the Empire (whether they understand it or not).

Conclusion one: it’s all a big lie!

Yes, it is a big lie. All of it. And this is how we end up with an Israeli Prime Minister who, by any criteria, is not only a Fascist, but also a Nazi as long as we make it clear that his brand of Nazism is a Jewish one, not a Germanic one. And it’s not just Bibi Netanyahu who does not mind dealing with Ukronazis, so the the the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine (see here for details). As for the said Ukronazis, they are now trying hard to deny that Bandara and his gang massacred Jews during WWII. As for Zelenskii, he is most definitely not a Nazi, but he has already caved in to the Ukronazi ideology (i.e. a form of Nazism which substitutes myths about “ancient Ukrs” to the more traditional Germanic myths about the Aryan-Germanic “race”). Then there is Kolomoiskii who is simply a typical Jewish mobster who has no personal ideology whatsoever and who has no love for the bona fide Ukronazis, but who is being very careful about how to purge them from power lest they beat him yet again. And above them all, we have the leaders of the Empire who use ideological categories as slurs but who don’t give a damn who they back as long as it is against Russia.

Against this background it is worth asking a simple question: do these words even matter? Do they still have any kind of meaning?

Conclusion two: yes, words do still matter!

I believe that they do, very much so! This is precisely why the legacy corporate ziomedia and those brainwashed by it freak out when they see expressions such as “AngloZionist”,“Ukronazi” or even the rather demure “Israel Lobby”. When somebody comes up with a powerful and correct descriptor, say like “ZOG” – the propaganda machine immediately kicks into high gear to shoot down in flames whatever author and article dared to use it. In fact, there are at least two types of wannabe word censors which typically show up:

TYPE ONE: the real McCoy. These are the sincere folks (whether of the Nazi or Zionist persuasion) who are truly outraged and offended that such “hallowed” words as Nazi/Zionist (pick one) can be combined with “abominations” such as Nazi/Zionist (pick the other one). These are all the Third Reich nostalgics, the defenders of a “White Christian West” and all the rest of them neo-Nazis.

TYPE TWO: the paid trolls. These are the folks whose task it is to obfuscate the real issues, to bury them under tons of vapid ideological nonsense; the best way to do that is to misdirect any discussion away from the original topic and sidetrack it into either a barrage of ad hominems or ideological clichés.

Seriously, what we are witnessing today is a new age of censorship in which government and corporations work hand in hand to crush (ban, censor, demonetize, algorithmically purge and otherwise silence) all those who challenge the official ideology and its many narratives. It would be naïve to the extreme to assume that the so-called “alternative media” and blogosphere have been spared such an effort at silencing ideological heresies.

Next time these self-appointed enforcers of the politically correct doxa come out, try this experiment: when you read their comments, don’t just look at what they write, but also try to guess why they write what they write and then mentally place a T1 or T2 sign next to their comments and you will soon see that they follow a careful pattern 🙂

The Saker

Why 2019 Ukraine Imports Terrorists and Exports Terror 1992-2019

April 10, 2019

by George Eliason, Special Correspondent for the Saker Blog in Novorussia

The shame of post 2014 Ukraine is that the only equivalent situation that could exist is putting the Ukrainian SS death camp guards, their families, and officers’ in charge of Israel. Would giving death camp torturers and lever pullers free reign to do what they want to an entire people have been the thing to do during or after WWII? As you’ll soon see, the Israeli’s and some stellar international Jewish leaders think so as long as it ain’t them.

In 2014, Israel’s Ambassador to Ukraine Reuven Din El and the ADL’s Abe Foxman met with Pravy Sektor leader Dimitry Yarosh. Even though Yarosh is a disciple of the WWII criminal Bandera and the Israelis know the OUNb murdered 900,000 Ukrainian Jews in Ukraine, they decided they believed Yarosh that the OUN is not anti-Semitic.

What Yarosh may not have told them but they knew anyway, is that prior to Pravy Sektor, he was the leader of Trizub Bandery. It was the militant arm of Slava Stetsko’s new political party in Ukraine called CUN (Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists). Yarosh was the WWII murderess’ bodyguard. In his eyes, he was the heir apparent and incarnation of what Nazi sycophant Stepan Bandera would hope for to lead Ukrainian nationalists in 2014.

So, of course Jewish leaders had every right to give Yarosh a clean bill of political health to the rest of the world. Sure. That was the only reasonable and responsible thing for them to do. Ukraine still denies any responsibility for the millions of lives their progenitors took or the lives they are taking today.

Slava Stetsko’s OUNb (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists –Bandera faction) made a triumphant entry into Ukraine and cemented the dominance Diaspora nationalists would have in the region. When she came in June 1991, part of celebrating her husband’s work was commemorating the June 1941 Lviv Pogrom her husband started. He was celebrating his declaration of the Ukrainian state which never came into being.

Why is this relevant to the events of 2014 through the 2019 Ukrainian election? What does it have to do with exporting terrorism?

Back in 1991, the Ukrainian nationalists OUNb were at a loss at how to proceed. “It had great ideological difficulties, however, because of its confrontation with Western democracy, its inability to deal fully with the question of the political beliefs of Ukrainians in Ukraine, and its lack of contact with political processes there.” Encyclopedia of Ukraine- Nationalism article.

Since their side (Nazi) lost the war, the Ukrainians were never able to set up a state. 1991 provided the perfect opportunity and let’s face it that only comes around once. The nationalists, now based in the Ukrainian Diaspora thought they would inherit Bukovina and Galicia. Instead, they hit the jackpot with all of Soviet Ukraine.

The Ukrainian nationalists were given the lands they couldn’t conquer or coax into line. The problem they faced was over 80% of those lands were never nationalist and hated OUNb fascism. Diaspora Ukrainian nationalists thought people in Ukraine were too Sovietized and could not be remade into nationalists.

The Ukrainian nationalists started a slow process of genocide through Ecocide across Ukraine and especially in Donbass. The Ukrainians suppressed the economy in areas not hospitable to their politics and moved the money and resources toward western Ukraine. The thought was and is if you can’t convert them, kill them or move them out of the way.

The Diaspora and OUN leadership started handpicking politicians in Ukraine based on these objectives.

This is the Ukrainian OUNb (Bandera) leader Slava Stetsko with Petr Poroshenko in 2003, before she died.Poroshenko is up for reelection in 2019.

This image is from the Lviv Pogrom that followed OUNb leader Yaroslav Stetsko’s Ukraine Proclamation. The caption reads that the Ukrainian nationalist death dealer is right behind her.So we know 3 things. This woman is Jewish. Slava Stetsko never lost a night’s sleep over this woman being bludgeoned to death. Stetsko and all the Ukrainian nationalists celebrated doing this in 1991. Slava Stetsko is the political and spiritual mother of Ukraine. She is a hero with monuments dedicated to her in Ukraine.

“Although I consider Moscow, which in fact held Ukraine in captivity, and not Jewry, to be the main and decisive enemy, I nonetheless fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimilation and the like. –Yaroslav Stetsko Carynnyk, ‘A Knife in the Back of Our Revolution’

How both Stetsko’s viewed Jews in 1941 is how Ukrainian nationalists see today’s Donbass and the way they want to resolve the situation for posterity. Why does post Soviet Ukraine and especially Donbass Russians have less value than animals to the Ukrainian government?

For any of this to be current and threatening, reality dictates the World War II relic OUNb has to exist today, doesn’t it? For there to be a Nazi threat, there has to be Nazis. Is it possible Ukraine could find people so filled with hate; they fill those shoes in 2019?

Imagine finding out real political Nazis not only exist, you subsidize them. Do you think your WWII era grandparents would talk to you after finding out you supported this “democracy?”

Since 1992, different factions of the OUN have control of Ukraine. When it looked like that grip might weaken, Yanukovych was kicked to the curb in 2014.

According to the Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, “Other statements were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera wing) called for the release of Ms. Tymoshenko and Mr. Lutsenko, and demanded judicial proceedings based on democratic … the correct response on the part of both the diaspora and Ukrainians in the homeland would be a boycott of representatives of Ukraine’s authorities.”

Now we have 2019 Ukrainian presidential candidate #2, Yulia Tymoshenko and her lieutenant Lutsenko firmly ensconced in and protected by the OUNb. This Nazi group predates Adolf Hitler and has never changed politic or policy.

By turning a blind eye to the Ukrainian nationalism’s fascist policies against post Soviet Ukrainians, the West doomed the country to eventual failure. Ukrainian citizens are not going to stay under the boot of fascist leaning politicians and political activists forever.

What happens when Ukrainians fully realize their country’s policies hurting them and their children originate in cities like Boston, Edmonton, Geelong, Bound Brook, or Kersonkson NY as long as they support a Poroshenko, Tymoshenko, or Zelensky?

And after normal people and journalists in the US, EU, AU, or Canada figure it out, how many western country politicians are going to sit back and allow Ukraine to export terrorists under various nationalisms back into their own borders?

None of this could have happened if the Ukrainian Diaspora were kept out of Ukraine post 1991. This is a look at the continuity of violence and genocide Ukraine and its Diaspora export. Post 1991 Ukraine joined the Diaspora ranks of “the Ukraine” in the worldwide propagation of nationalist uprisings, assassination, and murder.

The monster the western world has for so long chosen to ignore isn’t on its way home. It’s already coming out of the closet and eating the children.

The rest of the article won’t be about what Donbass and what’s left of Ukraine face after Ukraine’s 2019 election. Regardless of which nationalist wins, that result is already clear. Instead, it’s about what’s happened, what’s happening, and what may happen in your world.

“Stetsko argued that Fascism, National Socialism, and the coming Ukrainian uprising were links in the chain of a single world revolution. Ukrainian nationalism would bring down Russia and open a new chapter in the history of Eastern Europe.‘The tasks of Ukrainian nationalism’, he wrote, ‘begin where the tasks of Fascism and National Socialism end.” Carynnyk, ‘A Knife in the Back of Our Revolution’

Slava Stetsko believed this until she died and worked to achieve it for over 60 years. By combining all the little statelets that had no power, she created a lobby bloc and voting bloc in the US that determined election outcomes. Congressmen and national candidates needed her money to be in the game. Her goal wasn’t Democracy, not as you think of it. Nationalists in general view Democracy as a form of Socialism or Internationalism. They are all fascists whether they realize it or not.

Rolling all the ethnic nationalist groups into “the Ukrainians” to gain power and influence foreign policy was the only thing that made sense.- Madison, Wilson, and East Central European Federalism- A Dissertation submitted to The Division of Research and Advanced Studies Of the University of Cincinnati DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Ph.D.) in the Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences 2006 by Jonathan H. Levy

“This might appear confusing or even contradictory, but it is necessary in order to demonstrate the complexity of the meaning of “fascism” in the ideology of the Ukrainian nationalists, who called themselves “nationalists” but emphasized that they belonged to the family of European fascist movements and were closely related to the Italian Fascists, German National Socialists, British Fascists, Croatian Ustaša, and other similar movements. By examining Ukrainian radical nationalism in the context of fascist studies.” – The Fascist Kernel of Ukrainian Nationalism

Before you roll your eyes and yawn, let’s look at how a letter to Congress is signed from this kind of nationalist group asserting its power. Better yet, the following link contains an actual letter and email addresses of leaders in case you need to clarify anything in this article.

As the leaders of more than two dozen American ethnic organizations, representing tens of millions of voters across the United States, we call on you to provide vital support to Ukraine by immediately passing Senate Bill 2124.

Respectfully yours,

Naci Tozer President American Association of Crimean Turks, Sean Pender President New Jersey Chapter Ancient Order of Hibernians in America Inc., Dan Dennehy Chairman National & NYS Immigration Ancient Order of Hibernians in America Inc., Darek Barcikowski Secretary & Executive Board Member American Polish Advisory Council, Marilyn Piurek Co-Founder & Advisor American Polish Advisory Council, James J. Zogby President Arab American Institute, Mehmet Celebi President Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Javid Huseynov General Director Azerbaijan-American Council, Tomris Azeri President Azerbaijan-American Society, Walter Zaryckyj Executive Director Center for US-Ukrainian Relations, Marju Rink-Abel President Estonian American National Council, Atilla Pak President Federation of Turkish American Associations, Maximilian N. Teleki President Hungarian American Coalition, Karl Altau Managing Director Joint Baltic American National Committee Inc., Marta Farion President Kyiv Mohyla Foundation of America, Lyuba Shipovich President RAZOM, Ayla Bakkalli USA Representative The Crimean Tatar Mejlis, Julian Kulas President The Heritage Foundation, Maria Shust Director The Ukrainian Museum, Andrew Bihun President The Washington Group, Ukrainian-American Assoc. of Professionals,US UNITED WITH UKRAINE COALITION, Petro Kostiv President Ukrainian American Bar Association, Ihor Gawdiak President Ukrainian American Coordinating Council, Most. Rev. Stefan Soroka Metropolitan Ukrainian Catholic Church in USA, Archbishop of Philadelphia for Ukrainians, Alex Strilchuk President Illinois Division Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, Ihor Kusznir President Philadelphia Chapter Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, Ulana Mazurkevich President Ukrainian Human Rights Committee, Andrew Fedynsky Director Ukrainian Museum-Archives, Stefan Kaczaraj President Ukrainian National Association, Inc., Marianna Zajac President Ukrainian National Women’s League of America (UNWLA), His Eminence Antony Metropolitan and Prime Hierarch Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, His Grace Bishop Daniel President of the Consistory Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, Marta Liscynesky Kelleher President United American Organizations of Ohio, Meto Koloski President United Macedonian Diaspora, Larissa Kyj President United Ukrainian American Relief Committee, Alexandra Chalupa Founder & Acting President US United With Ukraine”

The nationalists started spreading their wings again and under the Ukrainian banner teach the world’s disgruntled how to be better at terror. And they started spending hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege of doing it. Those signatures represent a fraction of signatory groups.

From 1991 onward, the Ukrainian nationalists have been tied to the major terrorist groups plaguing the West. They train them, train with them, and fight with them.

The Ukrainian nationalists fought alongside Chechen rebels that earlier went to Afghanistan and fought for the Taliban.

Sasha Biliy, an insane Ukrainian nationalist fought for the Chechen rebels.According to Wikipedia, he was accused of murdering 20 Russian prisoners during the 1st Chechen war. Biliy was a coordinator for Pravy Sektor during the 2014 coup and proved so out of control he had to be put down outside a restaurant. The official story is Biliy shot himself in the head 3 times. Biliy was one of many Ukrainian nationalists on the terrorism learning curve in Chechnya. This would become important after 2014 when the Chechens returned the favor by providing brigades of ISIS fighters to the frontline in Donbass.

According to EA Daily, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was involved in torture and executions of Russian POWs in the Chechen War. Yatsenyuk was a member of the Ukrainian nationalist UNA-UNSO whose leader Yuriy Shukhevych whose father was the leader of the WWII UPA and a Waffen SS officer.

Yatsenyuk was awarded the Chechen rebels Dzhokhar Dudayev’s military decoration “Dignity of the Nation.” The importance of this is when the Chechen rebel Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion leaves Syria and bring ISIS/IGIL to the battlefields of Donbass. Ukraine works directly with ISIS/IGIL.

According to the EA Daily article, the list of current Ukrainian politicians involved includes Dmitry Korchinsky, the head of UNA-UNSO, Dmitry Yarosh, deputy of the Supreme Rada, Valery Bobrovych, the commander of the punitive battalion “Argo,” Oleh Tyahnybok, deputy of the Supreme Rada and his brother Andrey Tyahnybok.

 

Ukrainian nationalists in AfghanistanSimon Schuster fighting for Al Qaeda in the 1980s. Schuster went on to become a TV presenter in Ukraine. Schuster became famous during the Odessa Pogrom in 2014 when his studio audience applauded the murder going on in front of them through live camera feeds and interviews.

In the spring of 2014, ISIS officially entered the service of the Ukrainian government as it was gearing up to slaughter the citizens in Donbass at the invitation of then Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, interim president Olexandr Turchynov,  and future President of Ukraine, Petr Poroshenko.

When and where did “the Ukrainians” get involved with Islamic terrorists?

In the late 1920s, Islamic political radicals in Egypt formed a group called the Muslim Brotherhood. The group “Young Egyptians” followed.  Members of these groups intertwined and were part of or in step with the Promethean Project and were part of “the Ukrainians.”Their ties to Ukraine originally were membership in an exclusive group called the Nazi Axis by every country fighting Adolf Hitler.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its subsequent terrorist groups is the product of Western philosophy, not the religion of Islam.

The funny thing about these terrorists they can quote fascist philosophers like Julius Evola a lot easier than they can quote their own supposed holy book.

The Brotherhood with regard to their religious and mystical leanings are Sufi or more specifically Qutbist, for those who follow Sayyid Qutb. This is the philosophy of the Muslim Brotherhood which is essentially NeoPlatonic and does not distinguish between matters of belief, so long as people adhere to their movement. This is why the outwardly Shia al Zawaheri and the outwardly Sunni bin Laden can be comrades and brothers.

In an article titled “Terror, Islam and Democracy,” Ladan and Roya Boroumand correctly state that “Most young Islamist cadres today are the direct intellectual and spiritual heirs of the Qutbist wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.” And further, “When the authoritarian regime of President Gamel Abdel Nasser suppressed the Muslim Brothers in 1954 (it would eventually get around to hanging Qutb in 1966), many went into exile in Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Morocco. From there, they spread their revolutionary Islamist ideas – including the organizational and ideological tools borrowed from European totalitarianism.”
The Independent’s John Gray argues in an article entitled “How Marx turned Muslim” that Qutbism is not rooted in the Islamic tradition, but rather, is very much a Western-based ideology. 

Shaykh Rabee’ ibn Hadi al-Madkhali, the renowned Salafi scholar who has written several books refuting the mistakes of Sayyid Qutb, concludes the following about Qutbism: “The Qutbists are the followers of Sayyid Qutb… everything you see of the tribulations, the shedding of blood and the problems in the Islamic world today arise from the methodology (of this man).”

This is what is behind Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, ISIS/IGIL in the Middle East. Their central and eastern European counterparts are found in the old Hapsberg Empire holdings. This is why ISIS came to Ukraine and fought for the nationalists in Donbass. They have been connected to Bandera since the 1930s.

Now, this is a huge allegation for the average reader even knowing how large the Ukrainian lobby is in the US. And, yes Virginia there is a worldwide conspiracy going on, but it’s a lot simpler than you think.

In an article aptly titled Democrat Says Americans Owe Nazis for Suffering and Gives ISIS Eulogy on C-SPAN, it’s made hurtfully clear that a progressive Congressional rep with a stellar record in her district can be a vehement supporter of ISIS/IGIL and genocide at the same time. She can support the murder and torture of people she hates because her ethnic community fought against them and lost in WWII. Marcy Kaptur is a Ukrainian nationalist and this political disease infects both parties today.

When a Congressional Rep gives a eulogy for killed ISIS head-choppers in Congress, on C-SPAN; sorry kids, it’s past time to slam the brakes on this train.

It was the Ukrainians that infected the 2016 US election with their brand of hate and we’ll be revisiting this later. Next, we’ll dive into the first round of the Ukrainian election and what it means there. Following shortly after that, we’ll look at what happened in Charleston in light of where the real provocations are coming from. Care to guess?

For more than 100 years, Ukrainian nationalism has brought nothing but hate, pain, and suffering to the world. The 2019 election in Ukraine isn’t going to change that unless the international community decides they’ve had enough terrorism in this decade.

Force Ukraine to fulfill the Minsk Agreement. Make Ukraine obligated to social and economic reform in Ukraine. Stop the civil war and provocations with Russia.

The CIA is using Turkey to pressure China

by Thierry Meyssan

While Turkey has fostered economic links with China in order to solve its economic crisis, it has also publicly denounced the repression of the Uyghurs, basing its accusations on false information. Beijing sent a very cold reply. Everything is happening, now that Daesh has disappeared from Iraq and Syria, as if Ankara was once again running secret operations on behalf of the CIA, this time in Xinjiang.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | DAMASCUS (SYRIA) | 19 FEBRUARY 2019

Chinese Uyghur jihadists in Syria.

For the last few weeks, the Turkish Press has been talking about the fate of the Uyghurs, the Turkish-speaking Muslim population of China. The political parties of the opposition, including the Kemalists, have been outdoing one another to condemn the Han repression of this minority and its religion.

This effervescence follows:
 The report by the Jamestown Foundation on the « 73 Chinese detention centres » [1] ;
 The Radio Free Asia campaign, which broadcast a number of interviews with ex-prisoners of the Chinese camps, and went so far as to pretend that China had outlawed the Coran (sic) [2] ;
 The campaign launched on 13 November 2018 by the United States and their allies of the Human Rights Council in Geneva against the repression of Islam in China [3] ;
 And the hearing, organised in Washington on 28 November 2018 by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, (CECC), on « the repression of religions by the Chinese Communist Party » [4]. Thus we learned that between one and three million Uyghurs are being submitted to electrical torture in the re-education camps. These accusations have been reprised by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

It was in this context that the spokesman for the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hami Aksoy, published a communiqué on 9 February 2019 officially condemning the « Chinesation » … of « the ethnic, religious and cultural identities of the Turkish Uyghurs » and the death in prison of the famous poet Abdurehim Heyit, who was serving an « eight-year » sentence of confinement for « one of his songs » [5].

The following evening, China published a 26-second video by the spurious dead man. In it, he declared : « My name is Abdurehim Heyit. Today is the 10th of February 2019. I am the subject of investigations into the suspicion of violation of national laws. I am now in good health and have never been abused ».

On the following day,11 February, the spokesman for the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying, launched into a severe criticism of Turkey’s « errors » and « irresponsibility » [6].

While the imprisonment of at least 10,000 Uyghurs implicated in terrorist activities is attested, the number of between one and three million definitely is not.

Already by 1 June 2017 and on 13 December 2018, the Chinese had published two documents – one of them concerning Human Rights in Xinjiang, [7] and the other on The Protection of Culture and Development in Xinjiang [8].

Islamist prisoners at the Deradicalisation Camp in Lop.

However, the Communist Party doesn’t really know how to manage political Islam. It analyses the question from the viewpoint of a particular past, that of the Cultural Revolution and the outlawing not only of Islam, but all religions. After having established freedom in this matter, it is now witnessing the rebirth of the divisions of the Civil War, and the multiplication of jihadist attacks [9]. On 1 February 2018, it launched a new religious policy aimed at assimilating Islam by suppressing certain identity practises [10]. The members of the Party are obliged to provide the example by refusing to eat halal. Nonetheless, 24,400 mosques are open in Xinjiang for the 13 million Muslims.

For twenty-five years, Uyghur organisations have been clamouring for the creation of an independent state, first of all secular and now « Islamic » (in the political sense, not religious according to the Muslim Brotherhood’s definition of the term), in Eastern Turkestan (according to medieval title of Xinjiang). They were immediately awarded CIA support against the Beijing authorities.

 In 1997, the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) was created, and left the region to undergo training in Afghanistan with the Taliban and certain elements of Al-Qaïda. It quit political Islam and is directly funded by the CIA.
 In September 2004,a « government in exile for Eastern Turkestan » was founded in Washington by Anwar Yusuf Turani. It is a reconstruction of the alliance between the Kuomintang and Taïwan, in the prolongation of the Chinese Civil War (1927-1950).
 In November of the same year, in Munich, a world Congress of the Uyghurs was created, of which Rebiya Kadeer became President. It favours ethnic separatism.
The latter two entities are financed by the National Endowment for Democracy, an agency of the « Five Eyes » group [11].

Serious rioting broke out in Xinjiang, first of all in February 1997, then in July 2009. The demonstrators claimed that they belonged to the Uyghur separatist movement, Kuomintang Communism, and political Islam.

Beijing calmed the situation down by offering the Uyghurs certain privileges, for example, dispensing them from obeying the one-child policy (today abandoned) [12].

The US campaign against the repression of the Uyghurs seems to be compromised by the investment of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, in the Xinjiang authorities [13]. Prince is not only the principal businessmen specialised in the creation of private armies, he is also the brother of Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s Secretary for Education. His security agents are apparently mercenaries working on behalf of Bingtuan, a Han militia in Xinjiang.

It so happens that during the 1990’s, when the present Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was the head of the Millî Görüs and Mayor of Istanbul, he supplied a rear base for various Islamist terrorist movements, whether they were Tatars, Chechens or Uyghurs [14].

The question must therefore be asked – is the Turkish declaration against the Han repression of the Uyghurs a simple interior stance in order to avoid being over-run by the opposition parties, or is it a new state policy which conforms to the former responsibilities of President Erdoğan in the CIA terrorist strategy ?

The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) was very active during the war against Syria, with the support of the National Intelligence Organization (NİT). For many months, 18,000 Uyghurs (including at least 5,000 jihadist combatants) lived secretly in al-Zambari, a Syrian town on the Turkish frontier in the governorate of Idleb. They maintained their position with the help of the German and French special forces [15].

While President Donald Trump is preparing for a commercial struggle with Beijing, everything seems to be developing as if a reconciliation has occurred between the CIA and Turkey, aimed at planning further secret operations against China.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Pete Kimberley

      

[1] “List of government bids related to re-education facilities”, Jamestown Foundation, May 15, 2017.

[2] “According to Washington, Peking has just banned the Koran (sic)”, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 6 October 2017.

[3] “Western Campaign for the Rights of Chinese Islamists”, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 18 November 2018.

[4] This Committee, created in 2001, is composed of 15 members : 5 from the Senate, 5 from the House of Representatives, and 5 from the federal government. The Trump administration has not yet named anyone to sit on this Committee.

[5] “Turkey condemns China”, Voltaire Network, 9 February 2019.

[6] “China responds to Turkey”, Voltaire Network, 11 February 2019.

[7] “Human Rights in Xinjiang – Development and Progress”, Voltaire Network, 1 June 2017.

[8] “Cultural Protection and Development in Xinjiang”, Voltaire Network, 13 December 2018.

[9] “Jihadists returning from Syria: already more than 150 dead in China”, Voltaire Network, 6 November 2014.

[10] “China revises regulation on religious affairs”, Voltaire Network, 7 September 2017.

[11] The « Five Eyes » is a military alliance founded during the Second World War, comprising Australia, Canada, the USA, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It also manages the Echelon interception system as well as the « promotion of democracy ».

[12] « Que se passe-t-il dans le Xinjiang ? », par Domenico Losurdo, Traduction Marie-Ange Patrizio, Réseau Voltaire, 12 juillet 2009.

[13] “Erik Prince invests in China”, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 7 February 2019.

[14] During his alliance with Russia, President Erdoğan suspended his system for the support of Tatar and Chechen Islamists. See: « L’Ukraine et la Turquie créent une Brigade internationale islamique contre la Russie », par Thierry Meyssan, Télévision nationale syrienne , Réseau Voltaire, 12 août 2015

[15] “The 18,000 al-Qaeda Uighurs in Syria”, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 21 August 2018.